Arkansas kicks another 4,100 people off of Medicaid
The state of Arkansas announced Monday that it kicked 4,100 people off of its Medicaid program in the last month for failure to meet the state's new work requirement. That's on top of the 4,300 people who lost coverage last month and another 4,800 are in danger of losing it by next month.
The state was among the first to implement the work requirement after the Trump administration announced it would allow it. Kentucky also attempted to implement it, but has been blocked by a federal judge. That same judge is considering a challenge against the rule in Arkansas as well, but has yet to act on it. There are more than 76,000 people in the state who are subject to the work rule, which requires able-bodied adults who aren't primary care-givers for an incapacitated person, such as a family member with a severe disability, or participating in a behavioral health treatment program. The requirement applies to the Medicaid expansion population. The state's expansion, done by then-governor Mike Beebe, was one of the real success stories in the country, bringing more than 250,000 people into coverage. This is the Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson's way of undoing all that good while still not totally dismantling the popular program.
"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, who is deputy legal counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the groups suing 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 problems with the program are myriad, starting with the fact that it requires people report their hours on a website. Many low-income people don't have access to the internet to file their reports and on top of that, the website has been down frequently since the program started. For low-wage workers who often don't have regular work hours and often have multiple jobs, meeting the stringent 80 hour per month threshold and managing the burdensome reporting requirements is too much. That's even assuming the state has done an adequate job of informing people of the new requirements.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/16/1804861/-Arkansas-kicks-another-4-100-people-off-of-Medicaid
= new reply since forum marked as read
