EDITORIAL: Better bill dies, than benefits: Move toward work requirements for Medicaid fraught with unknowns

March 06-- Mar. 6--Some say, today's Legislature also works in mysterious ways.

Take for example HB 3136, relating to relating to applying for a federal waiver to implement Medicaid work requirements.

The bill would have required able-bodied adults receiving Medicaid benefits to work, participate in workforce training or community service, or attend a drug treatment or recovery program for at least 20 hours per week.

According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, about 159,000 West Virginians are enrolled in Medicaid expansion.

The bill was introduced a mere week before it died when it was put on a House committee's inactive calendar Wednesday, the final day legislation could advance from its chamber of origin.

Never mind such a bill was so hastily thrown together. Bills that affect 160,000 people's health care -- life and death stuff -- usually take more time.

And perish the thought someone would have thought to schedule a public hearing or two, or attach a fiscal note to it.

Even more telling, the very people who provide health care to Medicaid recipients -- the health care community -- were unaware this bill was even a thing until last week.

As one delegate described HB 3136, "This bill is an amazement." But so is this Legislature.

Perhaps refer to this bill in the context of an irregular process like the one this Legislature has embraced throughout this session.

This bill's introduction even defied legislative deadlines for individual legislators to introduce a bill and for bills to get out of committee.

Let's be clear, we are all for moving people into jobs and out of poverty -- jobs that provide or afford people a means to pay for health care.

But such bills as this do not replace poverty with jobs. Indeed, they just knock people off coverage.

Not to mention, they create a costly administrative nightmare tracking what people are doing. Money that could go toward education and training people, instead.

Furthermore, it would costs the state millions in federal dollars that support our economy, while hurting hospitals, rural providers and most importantly patients.

Throwing together a bill that tells people you must work or lose your health insurance, does not help people work. Matter of fact, nearly

70 percent of those on Medicaid do work.

We're starting to wonder if no bill is dead until midnight Saturday, the last day of this session. Still, we hope and pray this one stays dead.

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