Maine to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients
By
John Marion
24 April 2017
Maine Governor Paul LePage is proposing a work requirement for Medicaid recipients in the state. The move by the Republican governor comes after he has already imposed work requirements on food stamp recipients without children—effectively denying assistance to thousands of adults who are unable to find work—and forcing thousands more off the food stamp rolls if they have personal assets totaling more than $5,000.
This brutal policy is likely to receive approval from the federal Department of Housing and Human Services (HHS) and its Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which would need to bless a State Plan Amendment for Maine’s “demonstration project” for Medicaid in order for it to go forward.
Seema Verma, the health insurance consultant who is now head of CMS, was instrumental in writing a Kentucky plan which would charge Medicaid recipients as much as $37.50 per month in premiums and require them to work if they want dental and eye care.
While the details of the Maine plan are still unclear, it is part of a nationwide attack on Medicaid as a guaranteed benefit based on need.
In March, Verma and HHS Secretary Tom Price released a letter to US governors promising to open the floodgates for “innovative approaches” to Medicaid that include work requirements, premiums and benefit plan designs similar to Health Savings Accounts. About Medicaid work requirements, they wrote cynically that “it is our intent … to review and approve meritorious innovations that build on the human dignity that comes with training, employment, and independence.”
In Maine, where 15.8 percent of people are food insecure, 13.4 percent are living in poverty, and state law provides…