Work Requirements

A central question in the current debate over work requirements in Medicaid is whether such policies promote health and are therefore within the goals of the Medicaid program. This brief examines literature on the relationship between work and health and analyzes the implications of this research in the context of Medicaid work requirements.

A central question in the ongoing debate about imposing work requirements in Medicaid is what current work patterns are among Medicaid adults and how many so-called “able bodied” adults are not already working. Answers to these questions rely on various data sources, and characteristics of the underlying data and analytic decisions may lead to different conclusions. This data note examines what different data sources and analytic decisions tell us about Medicaid and work.

In this Axios column, Drew Altman examines the potential implications of the Kentucky Medicaid waiver case for other states and future waivers.

A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation explains the June 29 federal court ruling invalidating the Kentucky HEALTH Medicaid waiver program and its implications for other states. The DC Federal District Court decision in Stewart v. Azar blocked Kentucky from implementing the waiver on July 1, including its…

This issue brief summarizes the DC federal district court’s June 29, 2018 decision in Stewart v. Azar, the lawsuit brought by Medicaid enrollees challenging the HHS Secretary’s approval of the Kentucky HEALTH Section 1115 waiver program, which includes a work requirement, premiums, coverage lockouts, and other provisions that the state estimated would lead 95,000 people to lose coverage.

As a number of states pursue Medicaid waivers to require certain beneficiaries to work in order to receive benefits, the House Budget Committee passed a budget resolution this month calling for the enactment of Medicaid work requirements in all states, a goal also advanced in proposed legislation in the Senate…

A number of states have received approval for, have applied for, or are considering Medicaid waiver proposals that would impose work requirements as a condition of eligibility, and some policymakers are calling for a federal requirement that all states implement work requirements in Medicaid. This analysis provides illustrative scenarios of potential nationwide reductions in Medicaid coverage if all states implemented work requirements similar to those currently proposed. The scenarios assume low and high disenrollment rates tied to compliance with the work requirements and related problems with reporting, based on disenrollment rates reported in existing studies of the effect of Medicaid reporting requirements and state estimates of enrollment under proposed waivers.

Among enrollees targeted in the push for work requirements for “able-bodied adults” in Medicaid, only 6 percent are not already working and unlikely to qualify for an exemption, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nationally, more than 6 in 10 nonelderly adults in Medicaid who do not…

Most of the states with approved or pending Section 1115 waivers that condition Medicaid eligibility on work would apply those requirements to all or most nonelderly adults (ages 19-64) who are not receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) cash assistance, including older nonelderly adults (ages 50-64). Older nonelderly adults may be limited in their ability to satisfy a work requirement due to barriers resulting from age and/or disability. Previous analysis shows that many nonelderly Medicaid adults (ages 19-64) have functional limitations that may interfere with their ability to work but do not rise to the stringent SSI level of disability, making them potentially subject to work requirements. Older nonelderly adults are over twice as likely to have a disability than younger adults (17% vs. 7%). Furthermore, older nonelderly adults account for nearly half (45%) of all nonelderly Medicaid adults with a disability but not SSI who could be affected by a work requirement. This analysis examines the implications of work requirements for Medicaid adults ages 50 to 64 (referred to as “older nonelderly Medicaid adults”) and provides national and state level estimates of their disability, SSI, and work status using data from the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS).