And won’t be up and running for a while in most states….
The Republican ‘Back to Work’ thing seems a bit impractical actually right now…
With a looming Jan. 1 deadline for states to implement Medicaid work requirements, some state officials are warning that they won’t be ready.
Some, like Louisiana, still don’t know how to verify which low-income residents deserve to keep their health insurance because they’re enrolled in school.
Others, like Missouri, have no way to automatically verify who has a medical condition that prevents them from working, meaning they will have to demand doctors’ notes or other proof from thousands of enrollees.
And still others, like Colorado, say they’ve only been able to automatically check the health and work status of a little over half of adults who get their insurance through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. That means they will have to request paperwork from the remaining 175,000 people.
Such complications will inevitably cause new and renewing enrollees to lose coverage even if they are working or have a legitimate exemption, state officials and the consultants working with them say.
“I don’t know of a single state that has tested and confirmed it can protect coverage for eligible people with Medicaid,” said Hannah Katch, a former senior adviser for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Joe Biden and a former leader of California’s Medicaid program who is working with several states as they enact the work requirements.
“Every state I’ve talked to has shifted to phased implementation,” cherrypicking pieces of the rules to begin enforcing immediately while holding off on others until they have access to the right data, she said.
“Most plan only to implement the bare minimum by January, and they aren’t sure they can even meet that.”….
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Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave states about 18 months, beginning in mid 2025, to upgrade their technology, hire new staff, contact hundreds of thousands of people and figure out ways to determine who is meeting the work requirements.
Under the law, people ages 19 to 64 who receive Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program — typically, low-income people without young children — must work, volunteer or go to school for 80 hours a month to keep their benefits. But it categorically exempted certain people, including those living in areas with high unemployment and those too medically frail to work.
Exacerbating the tight implementation timeline, the Trump administration released a rule in June that imposed stricter enforcement than Congress required for recipients seeking an exemption for medical frailty….
Note….
Look for some changes coming out the new Congress to help the states…..
If NOT?
The Trump regulation could be ANOTHER way Democrats would be able to get the next Presidency and Keep Congress…
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