As was widely expected, Kentucky received approval Friday to require many Medicaid recipients in its state to work in order to receive coverage – making it the first state to try and restrict access to the popular social welfare program under the administration’s new policy, Fox News reports.
The Bluegrass State thus becomes the first state to act on the Trump administration’s unprecedented change that could affect millions of low-income people receiving benefits.
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The Trump administration announced on Jan. 11 that states could impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. One day later, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved the waiver for Kentucky, adopting that new policy for the next five years. Per Time, under the program, which officially starts in July, adults age 19 to 64 must complete 80 hours of “community engagement” per month to keep their care. That includes working a job, going to school, taking a job-training course or volunteering.
“There is dignity associated with earning the value of something that you receive,” Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said. “The vast majority of men and women, able-bodied men and women … they want the dignity associated with being able to earn and have engagement.”
“It will be transformational,” Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin said in an announcement Friday. “Transformational in all the right ways, in good ways, in powerful ways.”
More than 2 million people are on Medicaid in Kentucky, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation – nearly one quarter of the state’s population.
Nationwide, more than 60 million people rely on Medicaid for health coverage, according to Census Bureau data.
Kentucky was among the 33 states to adopt the Medicaid expansion program that is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act enacted under the Obama administration, but Bevin has been seeking to implement these changes since he was elected in 2015.
Bevin also defended the program from criticism that it was essentially punishing lower income people, and insisted that the program will only impact those who are physically able to work. The recipients of the program who are unable to comply with the new regulations, he said, will remain unaffected. Bevin added that the decision was meant to help Kentuckians make more healthy choices, like the choosing to work. Despite the fact that more Kentuckians have insurance, they’re not becoming any healthier.
“This idea that somehow we are punishing people, that this will be a detriment to people I think is a huge huge misunderstanding of what people need,” he said, noting that he himself came from a low-income family. “There is dignity associated with owning the value of something you receive.”
80 hours of .gov “engagement.” They’ll be suicidal before long.
FWIW, I’m not really in favor of things like this. Taking jobs away from others, forced participation, etc.
4.4 million state population , 2 million on medicad.
That’s a problem , no wonder Walmart full all day
During working hours , holy cow,,
Participation isn’t being forced, it’s voluntary. You don’t have to participate unless you decide to because you want the benefits.
Unless you fall into the tax paying class that has no choice about paying for it so those receiving the benefits don’t have to.
What a great idea. Dignity is the key word. Wait till people start working for something, they will become more efficient in using the healthcare services.
What type of person wants to use others? When you can do this anonymously, people will cheat the system.
How about we make public, somehow, what public benefits people receive. I have thought that obituaries should include a dollar amount of received govt. benefits. Thus, neighbors and taxpayers could learn who and how cheaters work. It might be a website to look up such info. This might need more brainstorming to work, any suggestions TBP’ers….?
I lived next to a man who was on disability and he was always telling us about his back pain. But he had all this time on his hand s and was always adding to his yard with landscaping. What big holes he dug. What a scammer he was.
I think the recipients of govt. aid made it too easy to continue without the shame that used to assign itself to those who cheated for govt. freebies. Food stamps used to be easy to spot. Now, they can swipe a card and purchase height dollar per pound meat.
Think about it, good men and women will take charity sparingly and for briefer times if the stigma could return. Let us reward good behavior here. Make the path:a low paying job, to a better paying job instead of encouraging unemployment. These people need help to learn that dignity is important to the human condition.
“Food stamps used to be easy to spot”
It still is! If the customer in elderly, there’s a 1 in 5 chance they’re a SNAP client. I hope the work requirement includes exceptions for say the elderly, the blind, parents with a disabled adult child, etc.
“In each month of fiscal year 2015, SNAP served an average of about 4.4 million households
with elderly individuals (age 60 or older). These households represented 20 percent of all SNAP
households (Table 3.2). Households with elderly individuals had an average household size of 1.3
people (Table 3.4).”
https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ops/Characteristics2015.pdf
Why should those people you mentioned be excluded? None of those classes of folks listed are unable to work.
I think you are misreading that table, read who it applies to and read the footnotes.
Your mortgage is subsidized by the government you effette charlatan.
Community (service) here in KY equals picking up trash off the side of the interstates which only takes a job away from the Mexicans. The requirement to attend school will cost us a fortune in additional daycare cost, ditto for working a job. Somehow this will be more expensive than before but with that said, IT’S ABOUT TIME.
80 hours is merely one half a month in terms of a 40 hour week, how many here would like to have two weeks off each month? Ten bucks says they will all be transportation challenged to top it off.
I thought the Mexicans’ job was to throw trash onto the side of the highway.
This micro shift in personal responsibility will be the equivalent of a thimble of H2o in the ocean at high tide during a cat 5 hurricane when the macro GREAT RESET reduces financial, lifestyle, and taken for granted plush spoiled comfort reality to the most shocking RUDE AWAKENING seen since the 1930’s.
The masses will be staggering around with the thousand yard stare.
Wish it would be in the state where I live. 80 hrs. / month = 20 hrs. / week, or 2.5 8 hr. days.
That could be split up over 5 weekdays, or include a weekend day to fill the required 20 / wk.
Earn it, instead of just taking it as a freebie. Yes, no displacement of paying jobs.
Plenty of volunteers needed at the charity missions, or cleaning up the trash litterbugs leave behind. Other areas as well. Indoor, outdoor, whatever is possible, on a case by case basis.
Able bodied only right?
Just keeping track of the applicant’s time logs are another area where volunteers could be productive and keep implementation costs lower. That’s a desk job function.
Gauge results later, but I’d say watch for the abuse of those applying for waivers as unfit or unable to perform such work. Bet the waiver applications inch higher, akin to all the people we see with handicap parking passes briskly walking from their Caddy parked in the front row.
But, physical limited people can do data entry, or other types similar. I applaud the move.
If taxpaying producers are on the hook to help those receiving benefits financially, they should be vetting qualifications efficiently, and some type of production should be a qualifier to those who are able. I say try it, and see how it works.
Tweak the system where needed as the bumps in the road will be encountered, but attempts to smooth it over should be an ongoing improvement goal.
Getting paid benefits, to sit on your ass…that system is being abused and we need to at least try a solution.
Your mortgage is subsidized by the government you effette charlatan.
Work requirements to breed!
I like the idea of the bill, but you know the ghetto churches and “community organizations” will be handing out volunteer work receipts like candy.
I did medicaid dental patients for 11 years when I started civvy practice with a 5 man dental group. Those benefits were primarily for children. A few procedures to adults from Medicare benefits. Those patients were shuffled off to me as I had the lightest client load. I did them dutifully and gratefully for the experience but the money was abysmal. The only way to make a profit was to over bill. That is to creatively invent procedures to pad the ticket. It became a game to employ essential scams to even come close to break even. (ask Rick Scott) Some would even do un necessary small silver fillings on every posterior tooth. We fired an associate for doing just that.
I recall one homely single mother with 4 children still to this day for the gratitude the sweet redheaded mother expressed to me for treating her kids.
As a rule, the patients would mess up the reception area and would not care if they missed an appointment. So you would have to double book to insure you would not sit idle. But then you had twice as many messing up the joint. Part of the reasons for me leaving the group is that their mission statement included treating everyone regardless of their financial ability to pay, especially those on medicare and medicaid. A fair amount of pro bono work too, shoveled off to me to do.
I came to realize that by including all strata of patients, you would effectively lose the best patients. They did not want to be around those who did not appreciate the services you provided. You couldn’t keep nice things nice. Plus you could not afford the latest and greatest equipment, supplies and techniques when the profit margin was decreased due to low payment schedules of the government. So when I left the group I quit doing Medicaid and never looked back. I did continue appropriate pro bono work.
In 2005 I matched up with a female from Match.com. She was one in two million she claimed. At her divorce proceedings from the tech mogul she ended up slapping her ex in the court room. She was fined $1000 or some such fine. She said if she had known that was all it was going to be she would have hit him harder. She was rich – a stable of horses – etc. After a few dates she asked me if I would like a paid-for dental office so I could just do free dentistry all the time. I said NO THANK YOU. I had learned the hard way that when the client pays good money, they appreciate what you do. The more they pay, as a rule, the more you know they value what you do. I seldom received that satisfaction when doing medicaid/medicare dentistry.
We dated right after Hurricane Ivan and my storm clouds were just beginning to gather making her offer moot.
Greetings,
With 22% of the population on medicaid, how is it even possible for the remaining few that work to shoulder such a burden? I mean, wouldn’t you feel stupid going to work knowing that others get all the benefits without having to do anything?
The people here in California, though never bothering to visit such backwards places like Kentucky, are freaking the hell out over the fact that people receiving a handout are being asked to give something back to the community. Listening to them, one would think we were witnessing a reenactment of the Holocaust.
I can’t wait to read socialist publications and their condemnation of the Kentucky Work-for-Medicaid requirements which probably aren’t as severe as they should be. Folks I live in Eastern Kentucky. I was born here and lived most of my life here. I am also of those who have worked many years in steady work. There are many “normal” who live here. We pay our bills and our taxes, and are the same as folks in other parts of the country except we talk differently and I think have the best home cooking of any place in the U.S.
Let me tell you, we “normies” are fucking sick and tired of our version of the Free Shit Army. I don’t think you can really understand the concept of the Free Shit Army until you’ve seen the Eastern Kentucky Version Free Shit Army. You have the slovenly clothing they wear in public, the “crack baby” kids who will grow up to be just like their “parents”, the retired normies raising their fucked-up grand children AND great grand children, and of course, the drugs. Did I say the drugs?
Based upon the drug statistics, we are in the middle of a real die-off right now. Most of them die between the age of 35 to 45. Good riddance! If they didn’t administer Narcan this shit would be over with real quick.
If the state would do something with these benefits that would encourage the FSA to move to Ohio or West Virginia that would be wonderful. Anyhow, at least some of the FSA now has to work to get some medical care, but not enough.
The government has created a great state of dependence on aid from the state and the fed. Once you get everyone hooked… Food stamps could be modified to only cover staples.milk and bread and such.
healthcare? We have a big problem with it being unaffordable, even for people with a job.
I bet there is an even worse problem with the way big corporations are subsidized.