chronically-illustrated:

The ignorance and ableism of Kellyanne Conway saying people who will lose Medicaid coverage under the Republican healthcare bill “can just get jobs” is staggering. According to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the majority of adults on Medicaid *do* have jobs. 8 in 10 live in working families and  59% work either full or part time. But they work jobs that don’t offer health insurance. 

Fun fact: That was my exact situation two years ago. I’ve been working at least part of the year since I was 16; during college, I worked several different jobs simultaneously at Westminster, but Westminster prohibits students from working more than 20 hours a week. So guess what? None of those jobs offered health insurance. Neither did the temp agency I worked for when I moved to Oregon. I was uninsured for a year before moving here and on Medicaid for a year after moving because I was working, but my employers did not offer health insurance, and my mom had been laid off, so I had lost the healthcare coverage I had through her. The only reason I’m not on Medicaid right now is because I was able to get on my dad’s insurance plan. Once I turn 26 (or possibly earlier if the Trumpites get their way), I’ll have to go back on Medicaid because guess what? Even though I *am* working, I’m too sick to get a full-time job that offers health insurance. The only reason I got on Medicaid in the first place was because working for the temp agency made me so sick that I couldn’t walk from the couch to the bathroom without passing out. So yeah, if you want me alive, it’s not an option for me to have a full-time job that would actually provide health insurance. And that’s probably going to be true for the rest of my life because, you know, that’s the definition of chronic illness.

There’s really nothing more ignorant and cruel Conway could’ve said about this topic unless she’d said, “I hope all the poor and chronically ill people just die.”