Adding pointless hoops to Medicaid makes it harder to work

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Consider Adrian McGonigal, who is challenging the policy in federal court.

McGonigal, like most nondisabled, nonelderly Medicaid recipients, had a job. Full-time, too, at a chicken plant. The plant’s chemicals sometimes aggravated his COPD, a chronic lung disease, but his employer accommodated the condition by moving him from processing to shipping.

More important, McGonigal’s prescription medication — funded by the state’s Medicaid expansion, since his job didn’t come with health insurance — kept his symptoms in check.

McGonigal was unclear about what he needed to do to report his work hours, or if he had to report at all. The new policy applies only to Medicaid-expansion enrollees, but even most people in that group don’t have to frequently check in with the state (because of age, disability, state already has work information on file, etc.). Like many I spoke with, McGonigal says he got confusing and sometimes conflicting information from the state’s Department of Human Services, which told him to report online. He doesn’t have a cellphone or computer, so he borrowed his sister-in-law’s smartphone.

“I thought that everything was good,” he told me in an interview for The Washington Post and “PBS NewsHour.” “I thought it was just a one-time deal that you reported it, and then that was it.” It wasn’t. The state wanted him to report monthly. He learned this only when his pharmacy told him his insurance had been canceled. After that, he couldn’t afford his medication. His COPD flared up and he landed in the emergency room. And he missed lots of work.

“I tried to stick it out and still go to work, but I just couldn’t do it,” he said. Ultimately, reluctantly, his supervisor let him go.

In other words: A policy intended to help people get jobs instead cost McGonigal his.

The lives of lowincome Americans can be precarious. They may change addresses and phone numbers often, which explains why other Arkansans I interviewed, including at a Little Rock homeless shelter, said they learned about the workreporting system only after their insurance was already at risk.

Arkansas’s overall unemployment rate is low. But in rural areas, jobs still can be few and far between. Many workers don’t have control over their hours, either.

The state made reporting online-only to avoid hiring more staff. Officials did this even though Arkansas has the lowest level of household internet access in the country, and the online portal doesn’t work well on smartphones. Once, when I tried it, I got an error message saying my phone’s browser was “not compatible.” The next day, it was mysteriously compatible again.

Most indefensibly, the website shuts down every single night between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. for “scheduled maintenance.”

No wonder 80 percent of those required to report work hours or exemptions each month are reporting nothing at all.

I asked Cindy Gillespie, director of the state’s Department of Human Services, how confident she was that all — or even most — of the thousands of people kicked off Medicaid were not working and were insufficiently motivated to work. She said she’s confident anyone improperly removed from the rolls could easily get their situation reversed.

McGonigal’s experience suggests otherwise.

Last month, his legal-aid lawyers persuaded DHS to grant him a “good cause” exemption and a chance to re-enroll in Medicaid. But because of additional red tape, he still hasn’t gotten any of his medication. It’s been six weeks.

Meanwhile, the chicken plant says he’s welcome back. But only, McGonigal says, when — and if — he’s healthy enough to work.