Medicaid Kayfabe: Fake Wrestling

This article is part of the series, “Left Hook: The Dollars & Sense Policy Forum.”

PERI’s Nancy Folbre describes the passage of “The Big, Beautiful Bill” as a  wrestling match full of “kayfabe,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “the tacit agreement between professional wrestlers and their fans to pretend that overtly staged wrestling events, stories, characters, etc., are genuine.” Folbre stresses that “The features of the bill that are likely to help ordinary people were catchy and easy to understand—reduced taxes on tips and overtime pay and a higher standard deduction for the elderly on income taxes. Yet these projected revenue losses are tiny compared to those incurred by the super rich.”