More than 4,300 Arkansas residents lose Medicaid under work requirements

Several thousand poor residents of Arkansas have been dropped from Medicaid because they failed to meet new requirements, the first Americans to lose the safety-net health insurance under rules compelling recipients to work or prepare for a job to keep their coverage.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) announced Wednesday that 4,353 people have become ineligible for Medicaid, out of an initial group of nearly 26,000 who became subject to the requirements this spring.

“I don’t like that number,” Hutchinson said of the residents who were removed. But, noting that 1,000 people in the overall program have found employment, he called the requirement “a proper balance of those values that we hold important,” including work and personal responsibility.

His state is the earliest proving ground for a polarizing idea, long advocated by conservatives but rebuffed by the federal government until this year, that Medicaid should follow welfare cash benefits and food stamps in requiring people to perform work or other kind of “community engagement” to keep their benefits.

The concrete reality of more than 4,300 individuals losing insurance — diminishing their access to care — is alarming leaders at medical and mental health clinics and hospitals, as well as legal advocates for the poor. They say logistics of the work rules are ill-suited to the lives of many poor Arkansans, who may not have computer access to report their hours online or may not have even received — or understood — letters the state sent telling them how to stay on Medicaid.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/more-than-4300-arkansas-lose-medicaid-under-work-requirements/2018/09/12/168bedce-b5f2-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html?utm_term=.7bcab5c7ecb5