WASHINGTON -- States should be allowed to require working-age adults benefiting from Medicaid expansion to be employed, U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman said Thursday.
The freshman Republican from Hot Springs filed legislation late Wednesday that would allow states to create the requirements without getting a federal waiver, as they currently have to do. The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand Medicaid to low-income, working-age adults under traditional Medicaid's rules, which don't allow states to require recipients to work. States can apply for a waiver to those Medicaid rules, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not approved a waiver to add a work requirement, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Some states, including Utah and Pennsylvania, have tried to include a requirement that recipients work in their Medicaid expansion plans, but the federal government repeatedly has rejected the idea. Wyoming and Kansas recently have considered asking to include work requirements as well.
Westerman said states should be allowed to create a Medicaid program that works best for them.
"It gives states flexibility that if they want to implement workforce requirements in their Medicaid expansion population for able-bodied working-age adults, then they don't have to go to [the centers] for a waiver," Westerman said. "It would just be in statute that if a state wants to do that, then they've got the freedom."
The bill doesn't require a work requirement or stipulate what it would look like, he said.
Arkansas was granted a waiver by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to let Medicaid funds be used to purchase private health insurance for people earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level. State lawmakers repeatedly have considered legislation to ask the centers for a work-requirement waiver.
Westerman, who last served in the state House, said some of his former colleagues are still interested in the idea.
Metro on 02/13/2015