In 2026, the Sick Must Earn Their Treatment
Sunday, March 8, 2026
ACLU.org · https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/congress-cuts-medicaid-to-fund-ice-how-h-r-1-harms-communities
11.8 million people are about to lose health coverage. Congress says they need to earn it back. The Bible has a clear answer to societies that measure human worth by productivity — and it isn't kind to them.
What's happening
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts $1.02 trillion in federal Medicaid spending over ten years. Starting in December 2026, recipients must log 80 hours per month of employment, job training, or community service to keep their coverage. Exemptions exist, but the burden of proving eligibility falls on the people least equipped to navigate it. Nearly half of Medicaid recipients aged 50 to 64 have a disability.
The consequences are already visible. In Idaho, the state has proposed eliminating home care services for the disabled entirely — dental coverage, occupational therapy, physical therapy, the support that keeps people with developmental disabilities in their homes. In Iowa, families have received notices that home care hours are being cut by nearly 40 percent. More than 700,000 people are already on waiting lists for home care waivers nationwide.
What the text says
Isaiah 10 is not addressed to individuals. It is addressed to lawmakers.
Isaiah 10:1-21Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, and to the writers who write oppressive decrees;2to deprive the needy from justice, and to rob the poor among my people of their rights, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey!
The Hebrew word for "decrees" — chaqqaq — is a legislative term. Isaiah is indicting a legal system. The prophets judge a society by one metric: what is happening to the people at the bottom.
Jesus draws the line to its conclusion in Matthew 25 — the nations are judged by whether they cared for the sick. The Greek word for "sick" is asthenēs: weak, without strength, unable to care for oneself. Paul uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 12 to describe the members of the body who are most indispensable. In the biblical imagination, the weakest members carry the most weight.
The reflection
The work requirement carries a clear moral logic: access to healing should be conditional on economic productivity. The prophetic tradition asks a different question entirely — what does this law reveal about what this community believes human beings are worth?
In Idaho, families are asking their legislators whether their disabled children will still be able to live at home next year. The Bible has been answering that question for three thousand years. The question is whether we are listening.