Trump Administration Approves More Work Requirements For Medicaid

What has the Trump administration been up to lately?

It has been quietly enacting entitlement reform by allowing Red states to impose work requirements for Medicaid. So far, Kentucky and Indiana have been given waivers:

“The Health and Human Services Department has approved Indiana’s request to add work requirements to its Medicaid program, after approving a similar program in Kentucky last month. With some exceptions, including pregnant women and the medically frail, Medicaid recipients will have to spend 20 hours a week working or in job training or community service.

Why it matters: We’re seeing the beginning stages of a trend here. Indiana has already added premiums to its Medicaid coverage, which helped cut enrollment by some 25,000 people. Work requirements will trim the rolls further. Look for more red states to follow suit, buoyed by HHS leadership that wants to say “yes” to as many of these proposals as it can. …”

In case you were wondering, 77% and 66% of Medicaid enrollees in Indiana and Kentucky respectively are poor Whites. As we saw yesterday, the public overwhelmingly believes that government does too little for the poor, elderly people and the middle class and too much for the wealthy.

Strangely enough, a “populist-conservative coalition” always end up being … conservative neoliberal economic policies that redistribute wealth to the rich.