"People in Medicaid ought to have access to the same insurance as the rest of the population. If they are segregated, it will be a poor plan for poor people"
About this Quote
The subtext is a warning about incentives. When Medicaid is walled off into its own ecosystem, it becomes easy to underfund, over-manage, and quietly accept mediocrity. “A poor plan for poor people” lands as both description and indictment: a system designed to contain costs ends up containing people. The phrase also flips a common political script. Instead of treating Medicaid recipients as a budget problem, he treats segregation itself as the scandal.
Context matters because the quote reads like a response to perennial proposals to “reform” Medicaid by carving it into narrower networks, privatized alternatives, or state-by-state experiments that can look innovative on paper and punitive in practice. Coming from an actor, the rhetoric is accessible and stage-ready: short sentences, moral contrast, no technocratic fog. It’s built to travel, and to force listeners to confront what “separate” really buys: not efficiency, but distance from accountability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Goodman, John. (2026, January 17). People in Medicaid ought to have access to the same insurance as the rest of the population. If they are segregated, it will be a poor plan for poor people. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-in-medicaid-ought-to-have-access-to-the-51316/
Chicago Style
Goodman, John. "People in Medicaid ought to have access to the same insurance as the rest of the population. If they are segregated, it will be a poor plan for poor people." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-in-medicaid-ought-to-have-access-to-the-51316/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"People in Medicaid ought to have access to the same insurance as the rest of the population. If they are segregated, it will be a poor plan for poor people." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/people-in-medicaid-ought-to-have-access-to-the-51316/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

