Medicaid Matters: Are Medicaid Work Requirements an attack against the sick and poor?

It seems that the Trump administration is on a warpath lately. Be it with President Assad in Syria, Kim Jung Un in North Korea, the trade war with China or on Twitter with...well anyone. When it comes to fight or flight Trump always seem to choose the latter.

These wars have been all over the news lately but there is another war that is ongoing that has received much less attention and it is being waged against the poor. Two weeks ago, Trump quietly signed a long-anticipated executive order intended to force low-income recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and low-income housing subsidies to join the work force or face the loss of their benefits.

The order, in the works since last year, has an ambitious title - "Reducing Poverty in America" - and is directed at "any program that provides means-tested assistance or other assistance that provides benefits to people, households or families that have low incomes," according to the order's text.

Last week, The Michigan Senate voted on key legislation that has been described by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce's website as "promoting independence among healthy, adult Medicaid recipients by requiring them to find work or engage in job training or educational opportunities as a condition of receiving benefits".

As discussed at Forum III of Michigan Chronicle's Pancakes & Politics event, Michigan is currently experiencing a workforce shortage and talent gap. Estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 jobs are currently unfilled. The Chamber suggests that Medicaid work requirements, modeled after what has been required under the Unemployment Insurance system since the 1930s, could help employers with their labor shortages. According to the Chamber, statistics suggest that over half of healthy adults on Medicaid are not working.

In theory, this seems like a good thing. Getting more able-bodied individuals to engage in the workforce will increase the tax base and stimulate the economy. However, there are some who believe this is not a good thing at all.

"After President Donald Trump and the Centers on Medicaid and Medicare Services opened the door on Medicaid work requirements, some Michigan lawmakers are unfortunately scrambling to run through it", said Gilda Z. Jacobs, President and CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy. "In moving forward on this bill, Republican lawmakers ignored data that work requirements are harmful to recipients and our state departments."

Jacobs goes on to say, "They disregarded the large group of advocates voicing strong opposition and what this would really mean to students, cancer patients and others struggling with illness, and our economy. These are people who have Medicaid for a variety of reasons, from having had tragic accidents that have left them home-bound to having temporarily low incomes due to unexpected life changes." These are real Michiganders who are scared of losing access to the healthcare they so badly need. They're struggling every day, yet some lawmakers want to make that struggle even more difficult," she said.

According to the Michigan League for Public Policy, "passing work requirements that will likely require burdensome paperwork for many Michigan Medicaid recipients, lawmakers are not only placing complicated 'big government' bureaucracy on Medicaid enrollees, but on small business owners, doctors and medical professionals and state caseworkers as well."

The organization also suggests looking to Kentucky as a cautionary tale as the state is encountering many issues including outrageous costs to state and federal government and significant legal challenges.

"Evidence shows that Medicaid is keeping people healthy and able to work, not enabling residents to avoid it, and the League will keep fighting to ensure data and logic win out over political rhetoric as the battle now shifts to the House, Jacobs stated. "We believe that Medicaid is a health plan, not a jobs plan, and that these work requirements will only cause more problems for people who are already struggling."