Republicans have long pushed to force working-age adults enrolled in Medicaid to show they are, in fact, working.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Party members argue Medicaid, a taxpayer-funded program for people with low incomes and disabilities, shouldn\u2019t cover Americans who aren\u2019t actively trying to improve their financial situations. And Republicans are closer than ever<\/a> to achieving a national work requirement, after winning the White House and both chambers of Congress, and unlocking a fast-track process to secure big spending cuts.\u00a0<\/p>\n A national Medicaid work requirement would slash spending by reducing the number of people covered. About 5 million adults could lose Medicaid coverage<\/a> in 2026 if Congress imposes one.\u00a0<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the thing: Most adults with Medicaid who can work are already working, or have some reason they can\u2019t (such as they\u2019re full-time caregivers). And the experiences of two states that have implemented work requirements reveal the hidden costs of adding those layers of bureaucracy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed last week that, at the request of three Democratic senators, it\u2019ll examine the costs of running a work requirement program that Georgia spent millions of dollars to establish.\u00a0<\/p>\n The GAO investigation comes at a critical time, said Leo Cuello, a research professor at Georgetown University\u2019s Center for Children and Families.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCongress seems to be pursuing cuts in Medicaid in a frenetic and rushed manner,\u201d he said. The GAO report could outline for Congress the full extent of problems with work requirements \u201cbefore they rush forward and do this without thinking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The GAO previously found that work requirement programs can be extremely expensive for states to run \u2014 hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases<\/a> \u2014 and that federal officials failed to consider those costs when approving the programs, which are not allowed to increase Medicaid spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n States must introduce new technology and have enough staffers to verify whether enrollees meet complex eligibility requirements and to monitor their continued compliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Arkansas tried its work requirement program, which applied to those covered by Medicaid expansion, 18,000 people lost coverage in less than a year before a federal judge stopped it.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, yeah, a work requirement would cut federal spending, but potentially also anger voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n New polling released Thursday by KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization that includes KFF Health News, shows a majority of Americans<\/a> \u2014 regardless of party \u2014 oppose funding cuts to Medicaid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Moderate Republicans are showing trepidation about changes to the program: House Republican Don Bacon, a key centrist from Nebraska, said this week<\/a> he wouldn\u2019t support more than half a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid over a decade. The House-passed version of a congressional budget resolution called for as much as $880 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Donald Trump has emphasized his goal of rooting out waste in federal programs, he\u2019s also asking Congress to extend his 2017 tax cuts and spend more on border security.\u00a0<\/p>\n That the opinion of one House member from Nebraska could draw so much attention this week underlines the hard math House Speaker Mike Johnson faces in passing those pricey priorities; he can\u2019t lose more than a handful of GOP votes to get it done.<\/p>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\nUSE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n