Minimum wage hike and low-income subsidies

Cara Michele posed some interesting questions in a recent post at Ed Cone's site:

Re: Minimum wage and social services
Some individuals and families in the Food Stamp and Medicaid programs would be affected, as would some individuals and families in voucher or grant-based housing programs. When you raise income, some people will lose benefits. Some of the benefits may be offset by the rise in income, some may not. (Medicaid is a good example. If your income rises and you lose Medicaid, but you don't have insurance, then you stand to lose much more than you gain.) I wonder if anyone has looked at how all this ties together? Will minimum wage workers who lose government food, medical and housing benefits make enough in increased income to help them, or will it hurt them? I'd like to know.

I'm no expert in social services, but I've tried to ask around and do a bit of superficial internet research. What I've found is that the requirements to receive benefits like Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, etc. are such that recipients basically can not work a full time job. For example, according to this state website, the two sets of requirements for getting food stamps are as follows:

Low Income Subsidy --- A program that provides additional assistance for Medicare beneficiaries with income less than 150% of the federal poverty level for the Medicare Part D program.

Medicaid Family Planning Waiver (FPW)--- A program for men, ages 19 through 60, and women, ages 19 through 55, with income at or below the 185% of the poverty level, to receive family planning services.

Medicare is reserved, as I've been told, for people who are over 65 or who have a disability that basically prevents them from working. Medicaid requirements, set by the state, are such that it looks like one would also have to basically not work (at least full time) in order to receive those benefits. (Check out cryptic table that only makes a little bit of sense to me here.)

Affordable housing programs may be different. I will try to research that question with folks at the Housing Coalition soon. But when it comes to Habitat for Humanity, I know that there is no requirement that a homeowner maintain a low wage. In fact, HfH wants homeowners to be able to provide for themselves. Helping them with purchasing an affordable house (which they actually work quite hard for), is actually one step in that process of increasing self sufficiency. And other private (non-profit) housing assistance programs I've worked with outside of Greensboro have the same philosophy. I do not know about section 8 housing and would like to hear from a reader who knows more about this area about whether/how a minimum wage hike might impact those residents.

Overall it would seem to me (though I'm open to being proven wrong) that our campaign is aimed to help folks who are largely in a different income bracket than those who qualify for these subsidies. I am sure that there will be some overlap, but the general consensus of folks with whom I spoke yesterday was that the overlap would be quite small.