Medicaid Arkansas: 4,100 More People Dropped Over New Work Rule, ABC News

[appalachiablue]

Arkansas has nearly doubled the number of people removed from its expanded Medicaid program for not meeting a new work requirement, state officials said Monday, with more than 4,100 losing their health insurance under the restriction that's the focus of a federal lawsuit. The figures released by the state Department of Human Services show another 4,800 people will lose coverage if they don't meet the work requirement by the end of this month.

Arkansas' rule, which was implemented earlier this year, requires some beneficiaries to work 80 hours a month. Those beneficiaries lose coverage if they don't meet the requirement for three months in a calendar year. The state last month announced more than 4,300 people lost coverage because of the requirement. More than 76,000 people on the program were subject to the requirement.

Arkansas was the first state to implement a Medicaid work requirement after the Trump administration said it would allow states to require participants to work to keep coverage. Kentucky was the first state to win approval for a work requirement, but a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing it. A similar challenge over Arkansas' requirement is pending before the same judge.

>"This is an absolute train wreck, and it is a slow-moving train wreck that the state can stop at any time," said Sam Brooke, deputy legal counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of three groups that had sued Arkansas over the mandate. "Unfortunately, these numbers are exactly what we and everyone who was looking at this predicted would happen if this went into effect."

The 80-hour work requirement only applies to the state's Medicaid expansion, which uses federal and state funds to purchase private insurance for low-income residents, and not the traditional Medicaid program. More than 250,000 people are on the state's Medicaid expansion. -MORE,
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/arkansas-drops-4100-medicaid-work-rule-58509297

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/16/1804861/-Arkansas-kicks-another-4-100-people-off-of-Medicaid

[aeromanKC]

1. People are going to die.

But Her Emails.

[TomSlick]

2. As Herself often says....

No one ever moved to Arkansas to have their consciousness raised.

Our legislature in in the strangled grasp of extreme right wingers. The whole idea of the "work requirement" appears to be to kill poor people and bankrupt local hospitals.

[kimbutgar]

3. And they probably will vote repuke or not vote at all