S.C. Proposing to Redefine Medicaid

gets rid of the make-yourself-poorer-to-qualify strategy

when coffee prices rose in a freeze in Brasil, you could get all the coffee you wanted. you just wanted less.

what happens if you give some poor person $10 on entering the supermarket, so he can buy $10-a-pound coffee?

he does not buy coffee. he has other uses for $10 that he prefers to coffee. yet he has the money!

that's what ``can't afford'' means. it means not that you don't have the money, but that you prefer something else with the money.

the same thing would happen with ``health care'' if it were not free after you're insured. you skip the doctor visits you don't think you really need.

South Carolina would cap how much it will spend on a recipient, and if health care costs more than the account will pay for, then the low-income people would have to make up the difference themselves or go without.