White House Takes First Step to Attach Work Requirements to Medicaid

(From Zerohedge)

And while lawmakers say they’re close to a tentative immigration compromise to preserve DACA protections by packaging them with a border-security package that will presumably include some funding for the president’s promised border wall, the White House is already starting its crackdown on Medicaid.

To wit, the administration issued guidance early Thursday that will force people trying to collect Medicaid that they are working, or preparing to work. The policy change, according to the Washington Post, is the biggest blow to Medicaid in the program’s 50-year history.

However, it’s widely expected that any attempts to implement this policy will be met with a court challenge by the states, which administer Medicaid, and advocacy groups.

To be sure, 10 states are already lined up to adopt the new policy. They’re just waiting for federal permission to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults in the medicaid program.

Furthermore, three other states are contemplating them. Health officials could approve the first waiver – probably for Kentucky – as soon as Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the process.

As WaPo explains, the trend of imposing limits on Medicaid began two decades ago when a system of unlimited cash assistance was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The guidance represents a fundamental and much-disputed recalibration of the compact between the government and poor Americans for whom Medicaid coverage provides a crucial pathway to health care.

The idea of conditioning government benefits on “work activities” was cemented into welfare more than two decades ago, when a system of unlimited cash assistance was replaced by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families with its work requirements and time limits. The link between government help and work later was extended to anti-hunger efforts through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as food stamps are now called.

But most health policy experts, including a few noted conservatives, have regarded the government insurance enabling millions of people to afford medical care as a right that should not hinge on individuals’ compliance with other rules.

Despite promising during the campaign to leave Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare untouched, Trump has more recently signaled that he would seek to limit access to benefits for a program that was adopted as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs.

That tone was cemented in March when the newly sworn in administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, dispatched a letter to governors encouraging “innovations that build on the human dignity that comes with training, employment and independence.”

OOOOH the Dems will not like this.

I don’t think it sounds unreasonable.

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