No one who works full time should be on Medicaid

[OPINION] By Kathryn Anne Edwards Sat, Aug 15, 2026 (2 a.m.) A significant share of the U.S. workforce relies on public assistance despite holding full‑time positions. According to the Government Accountability Office, roughly 9 million Medicaid recipients and 7.5 million SNAP beneficiaries work full time. The GAO’s analysis of employer data shows that most of these employees are employed in the private sector, particularly in transportation, restaurants, and retail. One in five works for a business with fewer than 10 staff members, while more than half are on the payroll of firms that employ at least 100 people. The office also identified specific companies, noting that the count of Fortune 500 firms with thousands of workers receiving need‑based benefits says more about the eroding sense of fairness in the U.S. tax system than about the state of the labor market. Labor protections have either been discarded or weakened. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes the minimum wage, has largely been abandoned, and the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees the right to organize, has been gutted. There is little to say about the predicament of Fortune 500 employees who depend on food stamps and Medicaid. An internal Kroger memo from 2018 estimated that 25 percent of its workforce received SNAP benefits. A leaked Amazon memo from 2022 warned that the company’s astonishing turnover rate was exhausting the entire potential hiring pool. In the United States, paying workers poorly and offering substandard conditions has become industry practice. What is shifting is the notion of who is avoiding work. Corporate profits have reached their highest level ever, amounting to 11 percent of the economy. A strategist at JP Morgan recently observed that this outcome stems in no small part from a reduced corporate‑income‑tax rate. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported that 88 profitable U.S. corporations paid zero federal taxes last year, and many others effective rates remain in the single digits. The burden falls on typical, middle‑class W2 earners. They are meeting their tax obligations. The tax gap—the difference between what the IRS is owed and what it actually collects—now approaches $700 billion annually. Only 1 percent of that gap originates from wage earners, whereas a quarter stems from business income. These workers effectively subsidize the low‑wage jobs of others. The GAO demonstrates clearly that their tax dollars fund Medicaid and SNAP benefits for employees at profitable firms. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced fresh deductions for certain overtime and tip income. Congress could have lifted the tipped minimum wage, expanded overtime pay, or broadened eligibility—any of which would have compelled employers to compensate those workers more generously. Instead, it opted to offset wages through tax‑code subsidies. This dynamic is