Docs tell court Medicaid work requirement would harm patient care
Kentucky wants to require its Medicaid recipients to work a certain number of hours—and report that they are working the hours—to keep receiving the essential health care coverage.
Despite estimates that the new requirements would mean that well over 100,000 people would experience short-term gaps in coverage, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed off on what is being called the Kentucky HEALTH program. And HHS granted approval even though the court invalidated HHS' approval of an earlier version of Kentucky HEALTH, opining that the federal agency didn't consider whether the program "would help provide health coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries."
A group of Medicaid enrollees challenged the re-approved Kentucky HEALTH that is nearly identical to the first one in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Noting the "severe harms that it will inflict on Kentucky Medicaid beneficiaries," the Litigation Center of the American Medical Association and State Medical Societies joined with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Psychiatric Association and others in a friend-of-the-court brief in Stewart v. Azar that urges justices to stop the planned changes.
"The work requirements, the premiums, the lockout period, the elimination of non-emergency medical transportation benefits and the elimination of retroactive eligibility will simply increase the numbers of the short- and long-term uninsured," the brief tells the court. "HHS and Kentucky never accounted for how this loss of coverage will produce dramatically worse health outcomes."
The AMA works to improve Medicaid programs, expand coverage options and make it easier for physicians to see Medicaid patients. The AMA has policy stating that, if invited to do so by the state medical society, it will work with state and specialty medical societies to expand Medicaid eligibility.
