Out Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) slammed conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings who complained that people who receive Medicaid the joint federal-state health care program for people with low incomes just dont want to work. It also includes work requirements for people who choose not to work, Jennings said, saying that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that five million people on Medicaid simply choose not to work. This is not true; the CBO did not say that. Related Rep. Ritchie Torres: No, the GOP isnt becoming more LGBTQ+-inclusive He calls such claims absurd and says the GOP is more interested in tokenism than actually supporting queer equality. The percentage of people who choose not to work is less than 1% of all enrollees, Torres responded. The non-working population is mostly students and caregivers. Youre misrepresenting the nature of that population. Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Republicans want to encourage people to work, you want to encourage people to be government dependent, Jennings said. The camera turned to host Abby Phillip as she closed the segment, but Torres voice could still be heard, speaking off-camera.The caregivers are working much harder than you are, Torres shot back at Jennings. Jennings: It also includes work requirements for people who choose not to work.Torres: The nonworking population is mostly students and caregivers. Jennings: You want to encourage people to work Torres: The caregivers are working much harder than you are pic.twitter.com/DgkcbK30vx Acyn (@Acyn) July 10, 2025The panel was discussing cuts to Medicaid included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a Republican bill that the president signed into law this past Friday. According to the Center for American Progress, the bill cuts Medicaid and CHIP a health care program for children by over a trillion dollars and will take away health care from over 10 million people in the next decade. Almost 40% of children receive health care coverage under Medicaid.Republicans have argued that the people who will lose health care coverage are just choosing to not work, in the words of Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), but many of the people who will lose coverage actually have jobs but those jobs dont offer health benefits or pay enough for workers to afford health care.Jennings claim that nearly five million people receiving Medicaid coverage choose not to work comes from a CBO analysis that found that 4.8 million Medicaid recipients would lose coverage due to work requirements put in place by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, even though experts say that many of them would already be in compliance with those requirements. Able-bodied Medicaid recipients between the ages of 19 and 64 without dependents would have to work 80 hours every month, and that work would need to be verified for the previous one to three months by the state. This verification would occur at least twice a year. The CBOs estimate of 4.8 million people losing coverage included the people who would have trouble documenting and completing the necessary administrative work to prove that they met the work requirement.Moreover, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the 26 million working-age adults receiving Medicaid who dont receive Social Security disability benefits found that nearly two-thirds are working full-time or part-time. The reasons the rest werent working included caregiving (12%); illness or disability (10%); inability to find work, retirement, and other reasons (8%); and school attendance (7%).Jennings has cited the five million number in the past, and Politifact rated it False. Politifact talked to Harvard University health care economics professor Benjamin Sommers, who said that many of the 4.8 million people who will lose coverage will do so because they are not able to navigate the reporting requirements with the state and lose coverage from red tape.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.