Sally Pipes: "States are Grumbling About Medicaid Work Requirements. Taxpayers Shouldn't."

The following is an excerpt from an article by Sally Pipes, Founder & Chair of the Benjamin Rush Institute, published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Click here to read the full article in your browser.

States are grumbling about the cost of implementing new work requirements for working-age Medicaid beneficiaries.

“[I]t’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said.

But that argument gets the issue backward. The cost of administering work requirements will be dwarfed by the savings they generate. More importantly, those requirements will help preserve Medicaid for the poor and vulnerable Americans it was created to serve.

Beginning Jan. 1, able-bodied adults covered through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion will generally need to spend at least 80 hours per month working, pursuing education, participating in job training or engaging in community service to remain eligible.

The federal government has set aside $200 million to help states build reporting and verification systems. But many states say that’s not enough.

Their objection is not really the administrative cost. It’s the requirements themselves.

For years, states have had a powerful financial incentive to maximize Medicaid enrollment among able-bodied adults making up to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $22,000 for an individual. That’s because Washington picks up 90% of the cost of covering these expansion beneficiaries under Obamacare; states are responsible for just 10%.

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