The temporary disability issue nobody talks about when they talk about work requirements and means testing.
People, often politicians, will say that work requirements for healthcare coverage via Medicaid will encourage able-bodied people to get jobs, and won't have an effect on "the disabled" recipients. But one big category of people who have dire need for Medicaid are people with temporary health conditions which lead to loss of employment, loss of healthcare; which is why tying healthcare to employment is so nonsensically wrong. Temporary health conditions do not necessarily qualify as "disabled" under the Medicaid rules. Medicaid's criteria for "disabled" is being deemed by medical professionals on a state government form, or by the Social Security Administration, to be unable to do gainful employment 1 year or more. Think of how many times you or someone you know has had a temporary but very serious health condition that needed to be fixed and would not last 12 months or more because the person would likely be dead before then, such as an appendicitis. This happens all the time that there are people with health conditions that are desperately needing medical treatment, possibly to prevent death, or perhaps to prevent future disability or a worsening condition, but are NOT going to fit the very specific legal definition of unable to work in gainful employment for 12 months or more. It’s bureaucratic madness under these requirements to have work requirements.
So many won't be able to "prove you matter" — something said by the Trump administration’s Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Obviously this is blatant eugenics out loud, but unfortunately the system does allow for such a punitive mindset and pseudoscience behaviour modification approach to society to begin with; the rules have been written that way all along.
The Trump administration's Agriculture Secretary is openly stating plans to make up for the farm staffing shortages from deporting migrant workers by putting desperately ill Medicaid applicants into forced labor on farms. Those people with temporary medical emergency needs, or disabilities for which they have yet to get through a formal process, will be disallowed to get needed medical attention unless they do indentured servitude to fill the unforced error of farm labor shortages.
I wish I could say this would be unprecedented in America, but the fact is that people with substance use conditions for example (a medical condition), have been in forced unpaid labor for years, exploited by sketchy religious business operations. The welfare changes called TANF, promoted as a “welfare to work” system, also allow for companies to get cheaper labor than in the open market, often via privatized welfare programs.
Means testing is often used for eugenics ideological purposes, and people pushing it, or going along with it, often have no idea about the reality of its implementation. And shoving ill people into forced labor is a way to hasten the death of "undesirable" people in a way that seems indirect, rather than just euthanizing them. This is human trafficking that seems to fly under the American conscience, and it’s of course a form of eugenics.