Trump administration appeals rulings that blocked Medicaid work requirements

Source: Washington Post



The Trump administration appealed court rulings Wednesday by a federal judge that blocked federally approved programs in two states to compel some able-bodied people to work to qualify for Medicaid.

The appeals, in cases challenging Kentucky and Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirements, come two weeks after a federal judge in Washington issued opinions that President Trump’s top health aides had been “arbitrary and capricious” in allowing the new rules and failed to consider their effect on vulnerable residents’ access to health insurance. For Kentucky’s program, which was to have started April 1, the opinion was the second time U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg had ruled against the “community engagement” rules and sent the state’s plan back to the Department of Health and Human Services to reevaluate.

After the initial ruling, HHS did another review, as the court directed, and reapproved, with no changes, the plan it had previously given Kentucky permission to begin. The appeals, in a single paragraph that does not lay out the administration’s arguments, signify that, rather than going through that process again, Trump’s aides are hoping that a higher court will let the requirements go forward.

The appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit were filed by Justice Department attorneys on behalf of senior administration health officials who are named in the lawsuits: Alex Azar, the HHS secretary, and Seema Verma, administrator of HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the branch of the department that approved the two states’ programs.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-appeals-rulings-blocking-medicaid-work-requirements/2019/04/10/689024f6-5bb9-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html