By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News
The director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave a spirited defense of work requirements like Kentucky has proposed for its Medicaid program, saying "We are committed to this issue."
Seema Verma spoke Thursday to a conference of insurers who managed care for state Medicaid programs. She did not mention that a federal judge has blocked the Kentucky plan, which is being re-evaluated by her agency, but addressed fears that the "community engagement" and reporting requirements would lead to loss of coverage for thousands of Kentuckians.
"These policies are not blunt instruments," Verma said. "We’ve worked carefully to design important protections to ensure that states exempt individuals who have disabilities, are medically frail, serve as primary caregivers, or have an acute medical condition that prevent them from successfully meeting the requirement."
Kentucky's plan would require "able-bodied" Medicaid beneficiaries to spend 80 hours a week at work, in school, volunteering or, if needed, drug treatment. Verma cast the rules as an attempt to thwart a culture of dependency, and noted that the percentage of childless adults under 50 who are not in the workfrce has dropped 3.4 percentage points since 2000, mostly before the Great Recession.
"It is not compassionate to trap people on government programs, or create greater dependency on public assistance as we expand programs like Medicaid," she said. "True compassion is giving people the tools necessary for self-sufficiency… allowing able-bodied, working age adults to experience the dignity of a job, of contributing to their own care, and gaining a foothold on the path to independence.
"And there is clear evidence that people are happier and healthier when they are working and leading independent, self-sufficient lives. . . . The problem too often is that the most well-meaning government policies trap people in a hopeless cycle of poverty, making it too difficult to escape, and too easy to become more dependent. Instead, we ought to insist that the able-bodied participate in earning benefits."
Kentucky Health News
The director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave a spirited defense of work requirements like Kentucky has proposed for its Medicaid program, saying "We are committed to this issue."
Seema Verma spoke Thursday to a conference of insurers who managed care for state Medicaid programs. She did not mention that a federal judge has blocked the Kentucky plan, which is being re-evaluated by her agency, but addressed fears that the "community engagement" and reporting requirements would lead to loss of coverage for thousands of Kentuckians.
"These policies are not blunt instruments," Verma said. "We’ve worked carefully to design important protections to ensure that states exempt individuals who have disabilities, are medically frail, serve as primary caregivers, or have an acute medical condition that prevent them from successfully meeting the requirement."
Kentucky's plan would require "able-bodied" Medicaid beneficiaries to spend 80 hours a week at work, in school, volunteering or, if needed, drug treatment. Verma cast the rules as an attempt to thwart a culture of dependency, and noted that the percentage of childless adults under 50 who are not in the workfrce has dropped 3.4 percentage points since 2000, mostly before the Great Recession.
"It is not compassionate to trap people on government programs, or create greater dependency on public assistance as we expand programs like Medicaid," she said. "True compassion is giving people the tools necessary for self-sufficiency… allowing able-bodied, working age adults to experience the dignity of a job, of contributing to their own care, and gaining a foothold on the path to independence.
"And there is clear evidence that people are happier and healthier when they are working and leading independent, self-sufficient lives. . . . The problem too often is that the most well-meaning government policies trap people in a hopeless cycle of poverty, making it too difficult to escape, and too easy to become more dependent. Instead, we ought to insist that the able-bodied participate in earning benefits."
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