This video, produced by More Perfect Union, examines the cost of administering Medicaid and SNAP eligibility systems built and run by private contractors. It reports that Deloitte holds at least $6 billion in state contracts for these systems nationwide, and that Equifax’s income-verification data is a growing cost center as new laws require more frequent eligibility checks. The video argues that this complexity — compounded by expanded work-reporting requirements under the 2025 reconciliation law often called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — causes eligible people to lose coverage over paperwork and system errors rather than genuine ineligibility. It follows an Arkansas mother’s experience renewing SNAP and Medicaid benefits, cites reported system failures in Rhode Island and Texas, and includes an interview with a state senator who defends Arkansas’s contract with Deloitte, alongside critical commentary from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and outside researchers. It closes by pointing to Australia’s shift toward in-house government IT work as a possible alternative model.
Note: this video reflects More Perfect Union’s own reporting and editorial framing — including its characterization of these administrative costs as “waste” and its argument that eligibility-verification requirements function primarily as barriers rather than fraud prevention. Whether work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks serve legitimate program-integrity goals or mainly create administrative burden is a genuinely contested policy question — a disagreement the video itself illustrates through the interviewed state senator’s defense of the current system. The specific dollar figures and contract details cited are per the video’s own reporting and have not been independently verified by this site.
Related: the underlying problem this video documents — means-tested eligibility systems that burden applicants with paperwork rather than serving them — is examined in depth, along with a proposed structural alternative, in the book chapter Universal Benefits: The Super Solution.