Arkansas has instituted Medicaid work requirements. A subset of Medicaid beneficiaries have to report monthly online their work or work-search or community engagement activities.
September 5th was the end of the third reporting period.
They are working as their advocates have intended.
Over 4,500 #AR #Medicaid enrollees just lost coverage. This is first cohort from June. That month, about 26,000 subject to requirement, 15,500 exempted via state data, 2,400 reported exemption leaving about 8,000 to comply. Over half now losing coverage. https://t.co/3giwZmK5bJ
— Judy Solomon (@JudyCBPP) September 6, 2018
The work requirements are paper work and administrative hassle requirements. They are roadblocks to coverage which is leading to a 50% attrition rate in a good, high employment economy.
HerMercy
Worse than that, much of the Arkansas, Louisiana area is not at all a high employment area. It’s been left behind in the economic recovery, so the results of the work mandate will be that much more devastating.
EBT
American conservatives are sub human monsters.
Cermet
yeah, but as long as blacks/browns are suffering worse, poor, sick whites are ok with this.
OzarkHillbilly
And with the money they’ve saved, they can justify giving Arkansas millionaires a budget busting billion dollar tax cut.
MomSense
We tried this experiment with food stamps in Maine. Poor people who couldn’t afford food needed to come up with reliable transportation and gas money to get to a volunteer gig or a low paying job and they couldn’t do it. They lost food money.
The assumptions of these brutal policies are really that people are poor only if they are lazy so anyone receiving benefits must be milking the system. Fuck the Republican sociopaths who design this cruel shit.
Duane
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
beth
What a cold, sterile article. People are just a bunch of numbers, statistics in it. The Democrats need to be finding these people, getting their stories out and putting a human face on Republican cruelty.
HerMercy
Arkansas is one of the most overtly racist states I’ve been to, and believe me, Ive been around. Southern AR in particular has a high percentage of black residents, and if you couple that with the great competition for jobs, it’s going to be “those people” who take the brunt of the effect.
Frankensteinbeck
Conservatism is a fancy word for being a mean-spirited asshole.
They only need to think that blacks/browns are suffering worse, which they believe because it’s a bedrock assumption to them that blacks/browns are lazy. Usually, the whites are hurt just a little worse by these policies.
rikyrah
EVIL AZZ MUTHAPHUCKAS!
low-tech cyclist
@beth:
This, in spades.
And it makes no fucking sense for there to be a work requirement to get health care, especially for people eligible for Medicaid. We’re talking shit jobs here, the sort of jobs that you really can’t do for very long if you’re sick. They aren’t going to be working in a cubicle somewhere, where you can do the work as long as you can sit up, see the monitor, type, and string enough thoughts together to do your job. Being healthy in the first place is a prerequisite for the sort of work they can get.
Goddamn Republicans, living at the intersection of dumb and cruel.
Joe Falco
We need FEMA to go in these Republican controlled states because it’s always a disaster when these monsters are in charge.
Steve in the ATL
I am so disgusted with white people that I may skip going to the club to play tennis this morning.
America’s original sin never stops haunting us.
CliosFanboy
or as the repubs call it “BONUS!!!”
jonas
@beth: The Democrats need to be finding these people,
getting their stories out and putting a human face on Republican cruelty.and registering them and getting them to fucking vote for politicians who won’t continually kick them in the nuts.Tenar Arha
When you’re Jewish you acknowledge your faults every year at this approximate time. And this makes me so angry that I’m going to spend next week acknowledging a load of extra faults.
randy khan
The only problem with this from the perspective of those who advocated for the change in the law is that some people still are covered.
sherparick
@MomSense: Working poor can’t take time off to report to an administrator, usually in a distant location, that they are working. By the way, 150 billionaire families that fund this BS starting with the Kocch brothers should be shamed and boycotted to the fullest extent possible.
Alain the site fixer
test comment in alternate post
Alain the site fixer
@Alain the site fixer: I’ll be back
Mnemosyne
@jonas:
I’m sure you will be shocked to hear that Alabama has some of the most repressive voter suppression laws in the country amd they deliberately make it very difficult to register people. Thanks, Roberts Court, for deciding that the VRA was outmoded!
citylab.com/equity/2017/12/alabamas-election-system-still-fed-up/548303/
HRA
This news caused an almost hour of explanation to Mr. A who is recuperating for the second week from a stroke
We both retired 6 years ago. He decided to get a part time job. He is unable to work now and may never work again. I had to deal with this for over an hour along with his not understanding we do have health insurance that was carried forward with my retirement as a government worker. He did forget he was under my policy for 27 years and I do understand this came about due to his current medical state. Yet, my disturbance is nothing in comparison to the people affected negatively by these craven idiots who do so to fill their own pockets and care not at all for the dangers caused to others. . . .
Brachiator
The conservative agenda seeks to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare and almost all welfare programs, because right wingers detest and totally reject the idea of a social safety net and anything that they perceive as a welfare state.
So, perversely, these people do not see any social benefit in the fact that the number of uninsured has fallen dramatically since Obamacare passed. Instead, they see undeserving parasites who have used government subsidies to get health insurance. They would rather see these people get sick or die rather than be able to lead productive lives with some help from the government.
An individual in their ideal society only deserves what he (and it is always a he) is able to buy with the money he has earned by working, and spends in the private sector. Obviously, a lot of this shit is arbitrary and hypocritical. White people, and it is mainly white people who most tenaciously cling to this ridiculous gospel, can carve out all kinds of exceptions for other good, upstanding white men, while crushing nonwhite people into the dust and then wondering why the oppressed couldn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And the mystical work ethic they believe in can apparently be transmitted down to their offspring, even when their children inherit wealth and never have to actually do any, you know, actual work themselves.
Chris Johnson
“good, high employment economy”? Nice try. Stop that.
Brachiator
@Cermet:
The con that Trump and the modern GOP work is to tell white people that unworthy blacks and illegal immigrant Mexicans are soaking up all the government money that should be going to good, hard working white people.
Next, the GOP passes massive tax cuts for the rich and gives lower income people a few pennies. The suckers think that they are getting a proportionate share of the tax cuts and so are happy.
The next phase is already beginning. I’ve heard callers into talk radio stations insist that workers could make much, much, much more in retirement income if they could invest their own money instead of having the evil government steal it. This will become a key argument when the GOP get around to slashing Social Security.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I always want those people to have to publicly explain exactly when the government banned IRAs and other forms of personal retirement accpunts, but no one ever bothers to ask them. ?
TenguPhule
@Duane:
The murders will continue until Republicans are satisfied.
/Republicans will never be satisfied