Developing: Trump Admin Eyes Forcing Medicaid Recipients to Work for Welfare.
In yet another effort to roll back the Obama administration's legacy of increasing Americans'
dependence on the government, the Trump administration is looking toward allowing states to impose
work requirements on Medicaid recipients.
In remarks this week before the National Association of Medicaid Directors, Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said the president supports measures
that would help recipients "move up, move on, and move out" of the program, designed
to help low-income Americans.
"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, according to The Washington Times.
"Those days are over."
Verma "defined community engagement as working, volunteering, going to school or obtaining
job training," The Times reported.
"Let me be clear to everyone in this room — we will approve proposals that promote
community engagement activities," she said.
"Every American deserves the dignity and respect of high expectations, and as public
officials we should deliver programs that instill hope and say to each beneficiary that
we believe in your potential."
As surely as the swallows returning to Capistrano, the possibility of a government program instituting
work requirements brought out instant rage from liberal pressure groups.
"Not only will work requirements impede access to health care coverage for individuals
who aren't able to work, but they will also create difficult administrative hurdles for
the vast majority of individuals on Medicaid who are already working," Catherine McKee,
a senior attorney with the National Health Law Program, told The Hill.
Current rules state that the only way that the individual states can get waivers to Medicaid
policies is to prove that the purpose is to extend greater coverage to the poor, McKee
said.
"Work requirements do not meet these standards," McKee said.
First, it's worth noting that, much like other articles of entitlement reform, this
would almost certainly apply to able-bodied adults without children who have the ability
to work, but choose not to.
Second, CMS says the waiver programs would be administered under a broad definition of
a section of the Social Security Act — known as "Section 1115" — that gives states
flexibility to experiment with pilot or demonstration projects to improve the efficiency of federal
aid programs.
Kentucky, for instance, says it can save $2.4 billion over five years if able-bodied adults
without children participated in either job training or other community engagement for
five hours a week, which would increase to 20 hours after one year on the program without
a job, according to The Hill.
Five other states — Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, Utah, and Wisconsin — also have pending
waivers requiring Medicaid recipients to work or participate in some form of community engagement.
Some of these states would only apply the rules to new recipients, while others would
enforce work requirements on all recipients.
Work requirements are always decried by liberals, mostly because they a) save taxpayer dollars
and b) reduce reliance on government.
The first isn't a priority for liberals, while the second is their raison d'être.
That's why the Obama administration expanded the welfare rolls to record numbers.
(And if any liberals want to argue that Medicaid isn't a welfare program, this Heritage Foundation
piece from 2013 should be required reading.)
Those two facts about work requirements are also why conservatives should be supporting
expanding them, especially when it comes to Medicaid.
What do you think of Trump's efforts got cut Americans' dependence on the government?
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