Deadline looms on work requirement

Arkansas Works enrollees may lose coverage if not compliant with program

Thousands of Arkansas Works enrollees will lose their coverage next week unless they visit a state website to report their compliance with the program’s work requirement.

Of the more than 25,000 people who became subject to the requirement when it started in June, 5,426 did not comply in June or July.

As of Aug. 15, 5,162 of those people had not met the requirement for August, either, Marci Manley, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Services, said Friday.

To avoid a gap in coverage, they must visit the website, access.arkansas.gov, and report their work hours or an exemption by 5 p. m. next Friday.

Those who miss the deadline will have their coverage deactivated the next day, on Sept. 1.

If they report their hours or an exemption by Sept. 5, they can have their coverage restored. Otherwise, they will lose their coverage for the rest of the year.

Marquita Little, health policy director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, said it “feels like a little bit of a switcharoo” that enrollees have until Sept. 5 to report on their compliance for August, but will have their coverage deactivated — at least temporarily — unless they report by Friday.

“I think it creates additional confusion,” she said.

Kevin De Liban, an attorney with Legal Aid of Arkansas in Jonesboro, called the plan to terminate coverage on Sept. 1 “wrong and misguided.”

He is among the attorneys who filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., earlier this month arguing that President Donald Trump’s administration acted outside its authority when it approved the work requirement in March.

“It’s another indication that these work requirements are not really about helping people up the economic ladder but are just administrative hoops that will force people off coverage,” he said.

Manley, the spokesman for the Human Services Department, said in an email that the termination date is Sept. 1 because the coverage, which is provided through Medicaidfunded private plans, “runs first of month to end of month.”

Enrollees then have a “grace period,” running through Sept. 5, allowing them to report their hours for the previous month and have their coverage restored, she said.

Arkansas is among four states that have received approval to add a work requirement to its Medicaid program. In June, it became the first state to implement one.

The requirement is being phased in this year for Arkansas Works enrollees age 30-49 and for those age 19-29 next year.

For the past several weeks, staff members at the Our House homeless shelter in Little Rock have been helping people log onto the website on computers at its career center.

Although homelessness is not listed as one of the exemptions on the website, the homeless can qualify for a “good cause” exemption by calling or visiting a Human Services Department office or sending an email to AW Good Cause Request@dhs. arkansas.gov.

Joseph Linder, 37, went to the career center on Thursday evening after he found a flier on his bed at the shelter advertising the assistance.

When he sat at a computer with Lyndsey Czapansky, the shelter’s employment and training coordinator, he couldn’t remember the username or password he needed to log into his account.

He could have created a new account, but he didn’t have the information about his health plan that would have been needed to allow him to link the account to his plan. Czapansky told him she would try to get the needed information from his insurance company.

It’s common for the homeless to lack such information, she said.

“Their stuff will be stolen, or they’ll lose their stuff or they just can’t travel with

all of their important documents, so it won’t be here, it will be in like a storage unit in Hot Springs with their grandma or something,” she said.

When fully implemented, the requirement to spend 80 hours a month on work or other activities will apply to about 167,000 Arkansas Works enrollees.

More than 265,000 people were enrolled as of Aug. 1 in the program, which covers people who became eligible for assistance when the state Medicaid program was expanded in 2014.

The expansion extended eligibility to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level. Currently that income cutoff is $16,753 for an individual or $34,638 for a family of four. Most enrollees receive the coverage through private insurance plans, with the Medicaid program paying the premiums.

Enrollees who fail to meet the work requirement for three months during a year will lose their coverage for the rest of the year.

Out of almost 44,000 enrollees who were subject to the requirement last month, 12,722 failed to comply, including the 5,426 who also did not comply in June, according to figures released earlier this month.

Most of those who were in compliance were determined to be automatically exempt based on information in state records.

Such exemptions apply, for instance, to enrollees living with dependent children or who earn at least $736 a month. That cutoff is based on the average monthly income of someone making the state’s minimum wage of $8.50 an hour and working 20 hours a week.

Just 2,415 people met the requirement last month by using the website to report their work activity or exemptions. Of those, 1,571 reported exemptions and 844 reported engaging in 80 hours of work or other approved activities, such as taking classes or volunteering.

Because enrollees report through the website, access. arkansas. gov, it shouldn’t matter that state government is closed for the weekend or on Sept. 3, Labor Day. But to report, enrollees need access to the Internet.

The three insurance companies that offer Arkansas Works plans have employees who can log onto the website on behalf of customers. Several other organizations also are offering the assistance.

Andy May, an insurance agent in Newport, said he has about 50 clients who will be subject to the work requirement this year. Through phone calls, letters and Facebook posts, he’s been able to reach all but about 10 of them, he said.

A few probably won’t know about the requirement until they discover their coverage has been canceled, he said.

“We can only do what we can do,” he said. “A lot of these people are unreachable.”