Eligibility for federal safety net programs like Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and Kids Care is tied to means testing to make sure the person applying for the program actually needs the resources and qualifies.
It’s called means-testing, and we need it to be able to compare a family’s income to a benchmark to make sure they really need and qualify for the benefit. That benchmark is called the ‘federal poverty level’ (FPL).
For several decades, the federal government has had a small crew of objective and apolitical statisticians who specialize in using economic data to set up the FPL each year. The team takes Census Bureau poverty-line figures, adjusts them for inflation, and creates the FPL for the country (Alaska and Hawaii have a different FPL than the rest of the US).
In his infinite wisdom, HHS Secretary Kennedy fired the staff who do the rigorous and unbiased calculation of the FPL this week. Well, actually, he put them all on administrative leave until June 1, at which point they’ll all be canned.
HHS will still need to develop an FPL annually – but they’ll no longer have the staff to do it.
Perhaps one of the DOGE bros take a few minutes and make one up from now on. There’s a good chance that this mass firing was done so DOGE or Heritage people can set the FPL artificially low next year to kick millions of people off safety net programs like Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and marketplace subsidies.
Time will tell – but these DOGE bros are good at finding where the hinge points are so they can cause as much damage as possible with the least possible effort.
