Update: Medicaid Work Requirements Hit Roadblocks
-'Medicaid Work Requirements Hit Roadblocks.' Michael Ollove, Stateline.org (TNS), Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5/4/19.
WASH. DC - Toward the end of 2018, the Trump administration seemed to be marching briskly toward its goal of requiring able-bodied adults in Medicaid to prove they had jobs to participate in the public health plan for the poor. But while a number of states still are adopting work requirements, the path has gotten murkier in recent months, both because of court rulings and political calculations.
In three red states that might have been expected to adopt work requirements, lawmakers failed this year to pass legislation. Some governor seats recently occupied by Republicans changed hands as 2019 opened, bringing in executives who oppose work requirements. And a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in March that Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services had improperly approved work requirements in Arkansas and Kentucky. The same judge is considering a similar challenge to HHS’ approval of New Hampshire’s plan to impose work requirements in its Medicaid program.
While the rulings, which the administration is appealing, do not prohibit work requirements in other states, state legislators in at least two states took notice, and adopted narrowing provisions they hope will enable their Medicaid work requirements to survive judicial review in the face of expected legal challenges. “It’s not surprising that a state would not want to spend a lot of money setting up a program that may be struck down by a court,” said Leonardo Cuello, director of national health policy at the National Health Law Program, which brought the lawsuit against the work requirements in Arkansas and Kentucky. “You would think any rational state would not engage in this type of legislation at this point.”
Legislation on Medicaid work requirements died in West Virginia and Wyoming in February and in Iowa in March at virtually the same time a U.S. district judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that work requirements in Medicaid in Kentucky and Arkansas were illegal. To be sure, other states whose work requirement plans have been approved by HHS are moving ahead, including Arizona, Michigan, Ohio and Utah. Not including the two states affected by the court ruling, HHS has approved Medicaid work requirements in seven states and is considering applications from six others. “Nobody’s panicking,” Rea Hederman, vice president of policy at the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio-based free-market think tank that favors work requirements, said about the court rulings. “It’s a lot of business as usual, but there are more yellow lights flashing now.”
While federal public assistance programs relating to nutrition, housing and cash assistance have imposed work requirements since the mid-1990s, policymakers didn’t move to impose them as a condition for medical assistance. Conservatives began clamoring for a work requirement in Medicaid as well after the Affordable Care Act expanded eligibility to childless adults in 2014. Two years ago, then-HHS Secretary Tom Price and Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, alerted governors of the Trump administration’s welcome of work requirements...
READ MORE, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2019/05/04/Medicaid-work-requirements-hit-roadblocks/stories/201905040065
> MEDICAID EXPANSION INFO. AS OF MAY 2018.*
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Many of the AR program beneficiaries never even received any mailings about the new reporting system and as a result were dropped from the program. Others couldn't report their work data online in time, because the computer services for state offices were down each night 9pm-7am for maintenance, intentionally. So these folks were dropped.
The stories and photos I saw were of many people in their 30s, 40s and beyond, and definitely disabled from legitimate conditions and work injuries. They weren't out 'buying steaks and big screen TVs.' The plan there was a racket, cruelty and outright fraud.
What you're saying I know is the case, the truth despite the myths and distortions.
(SNIP): "In Arkansas, which was the first state to impose Medicaid work requirements last July, the state disenrolled more than 18,000 residents by December for failing to meet the requirement or submit proper documentation. (The state hasn’t updated the numbers since then.)"
