Paul Wilding, Oxford city council's revenues and benefits programme manager, said: "The benefit cap together with the right [employment] support is actually a useful measure.
"People started saying: 'If you want me to be an active consumer, I need to know prices,'" explains Virginia Proestakes, the head of GE's benefits programme.
Billions of Medicaid dollars (a federal benefits programme aimed at the very poorest) for example, are siphoned off, Hatcher writes, "using illusory budget shell games to divert aid funds from vulnerable populations to state coffers and private profit".
All of the plans create new insurance markets, along the lines of the federal employees health benefits programme, that offer a menu of coverage options and subsidies for low income Americans.
The House of Representatives budget committee chairman, Paul Ryan, on Sunday accused the Obama administration of "perpetuating poverty" with a benefits programme that does not help the poor find a way to a better life.
When the current emergency benefits programme expires, the maximum duration of benefits may drop to just six months a quarter of the current time span although the Obama administration says it will fight for a new extension.
