Democrats are not going to like this one bit:
THE HILL – The Trump administration is preparing to release guidelines soon for requiring Medicaid recipients to work, according to sources familiar with the plans, a major shift in the 50-year-old program.
The guidelines will set the conditions for allowing states to add work requirements to their Medicaid programs for the first time, putting a conservative twist on the health insurance program for the poor.
The changes represent the vision of Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who has long worked on conservative Medicaid changes.
In a speech in November hinting at the coming changes, Verma criticized ObamaCare for expanding Medicaid to “able-bodied” adults and said that group of people should be expected to work.
“Believing that community engagement requirements do not support or promote the objectives of Medicaid is a tragic example of the soft bigotry of low expectations consistently espoused by the prior administration,” Verma said. “Those days are over.”
The work requirements would only take effect if a state chose to pursue them and applied for a waiver from the federal government. The Obama administration always rejected state applications that included work requirements, but the new guidelines from the Trump administration would set conditions where those applications would be approved for the first time.
There are currently nine states applying to impose work requirements.
I’m totally on board with this. Just as able-bodied welfare recipients should be required to look for a job, so should able-bodied Medicaid recipients be required to work.
And as I suggested…
Democrats are gearing up for a fight, likely including lawsuits, arguing the administration is trying to undermine ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion on its own after Congress failed to repeal the health-care law.
Democrats argue the changes would result in people losing health coverage if they cannot meet the new requirements or simply if the new bureaucratic hurdles discourage people from enrolling. They say many Medicaid enrollees already work, and those that don’t often can’t because they are disabled or caring for family members or other reasons.
It should be undermined!
Obviously this would only be applied in Republican-run states, and many big Democratic states like California and New York would reject the guidance. But there are quite a few Republican states so the effect on Medicaid recipients would be significant.