The Trump administration is waging a vicious war on Medicaid — a program that provides life-saving healthcare to around 74 million Americans — and its effects will soon be felt in the state of Arkansas.
On Monday, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Seema Verma — who, prior to joining the Trump White House, helped craft Indiana’s punitive Medicaid restrictions — hand-delivered and signed a federal waiver granting Arkansas permission to begin imposing work requirements on the state’s Medicaid recipients, 60 percent of whom already work.
According to state officials, the measure will go into effect June 1, which would make Arkansas the first state to implement Medicaid work requirements.
In an article on Monday, Vox’s Dylan Scott made clear that Arkansas’ plan amounts to just a fraction of the broad nationwide attacks on Medicaid launched by red states, which are “putting the lifeline for millions of poor Americans at risk.”
“The stakes are huge: Work requirements for food stamps have been linked to substantial drops — up to 50 percent in some isolated cases — in the program’s enrollment,” Scott observes. “As many as 25 million people could be subject to Medicaid work requirements if they were instituted nationwide. In a very real sense, health coverage for millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid could be at risk under the agenda Trump is advancing.”
While Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson insisted at a press conference that his plan “is not about punishing anyone,” analysts argued that is precisely what it will do.
Citing provisions in the Arkansas waiver that will require those with disabilities to “prove” they are exempt from work requirements every two months and other forms of red tape, Judith Solomon, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), argued in a blog post on Monday that the measure is “certain” to increase “the gaps in coverage, worsen health outcomes, and possibly increase state costs.”
Brad Woodhouse, director of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, denounced Arkansas’ plan as “draconian” in a statement following Hutchinson’s announcement.
“By imposing onerous monthly paperwork requirements on working people and forcing Arkansans with disabilities to re-prove their exempt status every two months, today’s Arkansas plan breaks new ground in needless and ideologically-driven cruelty,” Woodhouse said.
Numerous analyses have found that paperwork requirements like those proposed by Arkansas and other states will likely lead to thousands of eligible people losing health insurance.
Republicans love bureaucracy when it’s aimed at making the lives of the poor more difficult. https://t.co/n8iN8BcdCB
— Jonathan Cohn (@JonathanCohn) March 5, 2018
As Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration paved the way for states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients in January by issuing guidance that granted states the ability to make healthcare contingent upon certain “performance” metrics, such as hours spent working or training for a job.
Since the guidance was issued, three states have had work requirements approved and eight other states have applied for federal waivers. According to Verma, nine additional states have expressed interest in applying for a waiver.
Under Arkansas’ plan, if Medicaid recipients fail to comply with the new rules — which require recipients to work, look for a job, or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month — for a period of three months, they will lose coverage for the rest of the calendar year.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy