{"id":304952,"date":"2017-04-24T07:53:36","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T06:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/maine-to-impose-work-requirements-on-medicaid-recipients\/"},"modified":"2017-04-24T07:53:36","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T06:53:36","slug":"maine-to-impose-work-requirements-on-medicaid-recipients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/maine-to-impose-work-requirements-on-medicaid-recipients\/","title":{"rendered":"Maine to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"page\">\n<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Maine to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    John Marion<br \/>\n    <br \/>24 April 2017<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>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\u2014effectively denying assistance to thousands of adults who are unable to find work\u2014and forcing thousands more off the food stamp rolls if they have personal assets totaling more than $5,000.<\/p>\n<p>This brutal policy is likely to receive approval from the federal Department of Housing and Human Services (HHS) and its Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS), which would need to bless a State Plan Amendment for Maine\u2019s \u201cdemonstration project\u201d for Medicaid in order for it to go forward.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>In March, Verma and HHS Secretary Tom Price released a letter to US governors promising to open the floodgates for \u201cinnovative approaches\u201d to Medicaid that include work requirements, premiums and benefit plan designs similar to Health Savings Accounts. About Medicaid work requirements, they wrote cynically that \u201cit is our intent \u2026 to review and approve meritorious innovations that build on the human dignity that comes with training, employment, and independence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> In Maine, where 15.8 percent of people are food insecure, 13.4 percent are living in poverty, and state law provides&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2017\/04\/24\/main-a24.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 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\u2014effectively denying assistance to thousands of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-304952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}