Medicaid patients in Kentucky now required to work
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration gave Kentucky permission Friday to impose work requirements on its Medicaid recipients, making the state the first in the nation to implement the administration’s new policy of allowing states to make Medicaid coverage contingent on work.
The move — which came just a day after administration officials announced the new guidance — is widely expected to pave the way for several other states, almost all with Republican governments, to incorporate work mandates into their Medicaid plans.
And it is likely to make Kentucky, once a trailblazer in implementing the Affordable Care Act, into a legal battleground over the conservative efforts to reshape the half-century-old Medicaid safety-net program.
Kentucky will require working-age adults who are not disabled or acutely ill to work a minimum number of hours each week or participate in other “community engagement” activities, such as seeking work, going to school or volunteering.
Those who don’t meet the requirements or don’t provide adequate documentation will lose coverage.
The state projects significant cost reductions, largely because growing numbers of poor Kentuckians will be caught up in the complex reporting requirements and paperwork, causing them to lose coverage.
Federal officials said in approving Kentucky’s proposal that the change would “promote Medicaid’s objective of improving beneficiary health” and “provide incentives for responsible decision-making.”
The state will also be able to charge Medicaid recipients premiums for their coverage.
Kentucky has seen some of the biggest gains in coverage since full implementation of the healthcare law, often called Obamacare, began in 2014. The state’s uninsured rate fell by more than half, making it a poster child for the law under the Obama administration.
The coverage gains have also driven major increases in the share of poor state residents getting recommended medical care and a decline in the number who are putting off care.