Parents' and children's health coverage is at risk as lawmakers consider adding work requirements to Medicaid despite evidence that they increase uninsurance and do not increase employment rates.
Currently, Medicaid provisions that are approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee include a mandatory work requirement for adults for them to be eligible for expansion coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Medicaid Work Requirements
However, the policy could, starting in 2027, mandate that adults aged 19 to 64 years should work 80 hours for one or more months preceding application for the program and one or more months between eligibility redeterminations while enrolled.
This could become a new requirement unless they qualify for an exemption for reasons, including pregnancy or a disability that prevents them from working. In Georgia, the Pathways to Coverage program was enacted under a Section 1115 waiver.
It is the only current Medicaid program that includes work requirements where applicants and employees are required to provide documentation of work activities to both enroll and maintain coverage within the program, according to Georgetown University.
The Medicaid work requirement that officials are currently considering in Congress could exempt parents, guardians, and caretaker relatives living with dependent children. However, it would not require states to give automatic exemptions based on parental status or other characteristics.
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If state authorities choose to not give out automatic exemptions, parents who are not able to submit a request to be exempted on that basis are still at risk of losing their coverage. The potential changes could affect millions of parents who have Medicaid expansion coverage.
For now, the timeline for the bill's new work requirements is still being discussed. This comes as Republican leadership is still negotiating with opposing factions of the conference regarding details of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, The Hill reported.
Potential Effective Date
While the initial version of the legislation that includes work requirements could take effect in 2029, some conservatives argue this is not soon enough. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the revised version would have an earlier effective date.
The consideration of the new requirements comes as more than 20 million workers were laid off or fired at some point last year. The majority of these lost all of their income and their employer-sponsored healthcare.
Medicaid was designed to be a sort of backup program for these types of workers. However, if the new eligibility requirements were to pass, workers would also be locked out of the program because of their employers' decisions, as per the Salt Lake Tribune.
