Congress has proposed cutting $715 billion from Medicaid, considering imposing work requirements on people receiving their insurance through Medicaid.
However, this policy’s track record indicates that it may not deliver the savings the GOP desires. Instead, it will terminate healthcare for many and subject providers to unpaid medical bills.
Limited real-world experience suggests that Medicaid work requirements don’t promote employment or save large sums of money, but do cause many enrollees to lose coverage, such as what happened in Arkansas in 2018 and 2019.
Some 18,000 people lost coverage in Arkansas during that time, including many who qualified but were unable to navigate the bureaucracy of work requirements. Many people who should have been eligible got bumped purely over reporting issues, especially beneficiaries with chronic illnesses and other issues that made compliance difficult.
Similarly, the work requirements in Georgia’s “Pathways to Coverage” program aren’t faring any better. They anticipated 100,000 participants, but this month it was revealed that it has just 4,903. That meager enrollment is the product of spending $86 million to have Deloitte Consulting build a verification system that Georgia hasn’t actually used to enforce work requirements.
The 2023 House-passed Limit Save Grow (LSG) bill, which serves as the model for potential work legislation as part of the FY 2025 budget reconciliation, would ban flexible state approaches. Instead, LSG would function as a massive, mandatory, nonwaivable federal funding clawback.
LSG has no phased-in implementation. States’ obligations would begin immediately on enactment, without time to put into place the automated information systems they will need to compile person-based monthly compliance data (for either work or exemptions) throughout a calendar year.
The only health exemption would be for people documented to be “physically or mentally unfit” for employment. Even SSI/SSDI beneficiaries would not be exempt under this standard, since many people with disabilities do work.
Take action now to protect Medicaid from cuts: https://hcadvocacy.quorum.us/campaign/ProtectMedicaid/
Sources:
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/politics-policy/medicaid-work-requirements-arkansas-georgia