While he may or may not have been taking an extremist Right ideological view of poverty, the OP article takes another extreme ideological view, that poverty is inevitable and individuals can do little to avoid it.
While it sounds heartless, I think there is some truth to the assertion that sound financial choices can lift you up from poverty. Duflo, Banerjee, etc. from the randomista economists crowd have shown that poor people are sometimes likely to spend extra cash in suboptimal ways (TV ownership when they need extra calories, etc.). http://economics.mit.edu/files/530
This includes buying health insurance. That health insurance is too expensive is unfortunate, and I think GOP earnestly believes that their plan makes it cheaper for people to buy health insurance. This is not unlike how Obama and Democrats implemented their healthcare overhaul with the best of intentions, yet it lead to expensive premiums, etc.
While we are loathe to admit it, poverty is a result of both poor choices and unavoidable bad-luck. Like the common debate of 'nature vs. nurture', it is hard to delineate bad-luck and poor-choices as causes leading to poverty.
At the end of the day, we should have compassion and understand that many things that affect our situation are beyond our control, and yet not be afraid to consider honestly and objectively, the various causes of poverty.