Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyers proposed Medicaid work requirement would create a catch-22 for some low-income Kansans, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report, from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities a nonpartisan research organization that supports Medicaid expansion said work requirements could jeopardize their coverage.
Medicaid recipients who fail to meet a work requirement would lose their coverage, said researcher Aviva Aron-Dine. But, she said, so would some of those who followed the rules and got jobs. Particularly in states like Kansas, that havent expanded Medicaid eligibility.
If they actually work enough to meet the requirement theyll be over the Kansas income limit and theyll still lose their coverage, Aron-Dine said on a conference call with reporters.
In Kansas, the income limit for a single parent with one child is $521 a month, well below what would be considered poverty wages.
Those whose earnings push them out of Medicaid rarely make enough to afford private coverage even through the health insurance marketplaces created by Obamacare. Only those with incomes above the federal poverty level $12,140 a year for a single person qualify for federal subsidies.
It puts (Medicaid) recipients in a no-win situation, said Sheldon Weisgrau, director of the Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, a coalition funded by several Kansas health foundations that advocates for Medicaid expansion.
Jon Hamdorf, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment official who oversees KanCare the states privatized Medicaid program said the administration is aware that a work requirement could cause some to lose coverage.
Even so, he said, the administration intends to continue its conversations with federal officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about a community engagement program for Kansas.
Colyer, a Republican elevated from his lieutenant governors post when former Gov. Sam Brownback left in January for a post in the Trump administration, contends that a work requirement would provide non-disabled adults the incentive they need to move off state assistance.
Were trying to help them to independence, Colyer said in a January interview with NPR.
Weisgrau argues the proposal is a solution in search of a problem.
Its based, he said, on the mythology that the Medicaid rolls are filled with people too lazy to work.
Theres no evidence of that, he said. In fact, theres evidence to the contrary.
A 2016 report by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation said that nationally 78 percent of the nearly 25 million non-elderly and non-disabled adults enrolled in Medicaid either worked or lived in families with at least one worker.
Most of those who didnt work, the report said, faced major impediments to their ability to work including illness or disability or care-giving responsibilities.
