Newly-elected Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear yesterday blocked a move by prior Gov. Matt Bevin to impose work requirements for some able-bodied Medicaid recipients.
After signing an executive order reversing the coming work requirements, Beshear told reporters the change is the “faith-driven thing to do.”
Beshear’s order will keep roughly 95,000 Kentuckians on the state’s Medicaid rolls, according to state data.
“Health care is a basic human right and every Kentucky family deserves to see a doctor and receive treatment when they are sick,” the governor said in a news release. “I will not allow burdensome roadblocks and unnecessary red tape to stand in the way of the health and well-being of Kentuckians.”
Kentucky adopted an Obama-era expansion associated with the Affordable Care Act of the state and federal program that included adults without children and added roughly 400,000 people to the state’s Medicaid rolls. Since that expansion, some Republicans in the state, including Bevin, have worked to winnow down that number. Bevin signed an executive order instituting the work requirements last year after the Trump administration issued permission for states to do so.
Beshear, who beat Bevin by a narrow margin in November, ran on reversing that order. The governor’s action effectively ends protracted legal battles over Bevin’s work requirements currently winding their way through federal courts. In June last year, a U.S. District Court judge swatted down Bevin’s work requirements — called Kentucky Health — saying they were arbitrary.
Kentucky Health would have required able-bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 64 to work or volunteer 60 hours a week, set strict reporting requirements and stipulate payment of premiums for some Medicaid recipients.
Roughly 1.3 million Kentuckians are insured under the program at a cost to the state of almost $10 billion. Since the state’s adoption of the Medicaid expansion, the rate of uninsured people in the Bluegrass State has gone from 14 percent to 5 percent.
Bevin argued that the work requirements would incentivize more people to leave government dependency. Beshear has said that raising wages in the state is a better way to lower the number of people on Medicaid.
This article appears in Dec 11-24, 2019.