Feds reject work rule in Kemp Medicaid plan

Governor’s office vowed to fight decision in court.

President Joe Biden’s administration rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s plan to provide Medicaid coverage to thousands of low-income and uninsured adults in Georgia who meet a work requirement, gutting the centerpiece of the Republican’s health care policy on the cusp of an election year.

Federal health officials said Thursday that the state cannot impose work requirements on Georgians receiving Medicaid benefits because the coronavirus pandemic will “significantly

compromise” the program’s effectiveness.

The plan had been in limbo after the White House pulled back approval of the proposal in February. Georgia Democrats have criticized the plan as a half-measure that would leave hundreds of thousands without coverage, and Democrat Stacey Abrams has put Medicaid expansion at the center of her 2022 rematch attempt against Kemp.

Kemp’s office blasted the decision to nix the work requirement, which was greenlit by President Donald Trump’s top health official in 2020, and vowed to fight the decision in court.

“We are disappointed the Biden administration chose to turn its back on a bipartisan group in the Georgia General Assembly that came together to help create a fair and balanced health care framework that increases options and lowers costs,” Kemp spokeswoman Katie Byrd said.

“Though they attempted to hide behind the holiday in announcing two days before Christmas, we plan to challenge their misguided — likely political — decision in a court of law,” she said.

Kemp made the plan his answer to Democratic calls to expand Medicaid, casting it as a “fiscally conservative” way to add more needy recipients to Georgia’s rolls.

At a press conference last year, he declared the “status quo is simply unacceptable” as he cited the state’s lofty premium costs and high level of uninsured people — second-worst in the nation.

It would have allowed perhaps as many as 50,000 poor and uninsured adults to be added to the Medicaid rolls within two years. Still, Kemp’s office estimated that more than 400,000 people would not meet the Medicaid requirements and would be left uninsured.

Health care advocacy groups and Democrats have long painted the governor’s proposal as an incremental step and called for a full Medicaid expansion for the state’s very poor, as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act.

More than three dozen states have expanded their Medicaid programs, a step the governor has labeled as too costly and too inflexible. Some Republicans privately hoped that Kemp would embrace a full expansion in 2022, though that idea always seemed infeasible in a polarizing election year.

Biden’s signature policy proposal, the Build Back Better Act, would provide a work-around for the federal government to expand Medicaid to all poor adults without the state’s approval. That bill is stalled in the Senate, and it’s not yet known whether the provision will remain intact.

A separate Kemp waiver program approved last year by the Trump administration also faces an uncertain future.

That proposal amounts to a “reinsurance” plan to lower premium prices for those who buy individual insurance. If that proposal moves forward, Kemp plans to pour public money into the private insurance market with a goal to reduce premium prices for some Georgians.

The Biden administration has pushed to scale back that proposal, and it has requested new public comment from Georgians, who can submit comments until Jan. 9.

In Gov. Brian Kemp proposal, Georgians receiving Medicaid must work.