House Speaker Paul Ryan's sociopathic teenaged dream of destroying Medicaid died with the demise of Trumpcare in the Senate, but popular vote loser Donald Trump is doing his best to resurrect it, all in the name of "flexibility" for the states. The administration is announcing that it will start allowing states to impose big hurdles to enrollment, including things like work requirements and drug tests. Because making sure the most people possible have access to good health care is "a hollow victory of numbers."
In a statement distributed to reporters Tuesday morning, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma called the goal of covering more people a "hollow victory of numbers," and instead called for changes that "reduce federal regulatory burdens, increase efficiency, and promote transparency and accountability."
The announcement also promises to fast-track approval of states’ proposed Medicaid changes (which HHS grants in the form of waivers from existing Medicaid requirements) and to scrap some of the requirements that states report back to the federal government whether the changes improve health outcomes for recipients.
So not only are they making it easier for the state to keep people from enrolling and to kick current enrollees off the program, but they're being let off the hook for ensuring the changes they make actually improve the health of their Medicaid population. Eight states—Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Maine, Utah, and Wisconsin—have already requested these waivers. Some of those requests happened under the Obama administration, which refused to grant them. There's a good reason: the vast, vast majority of Medicaid recipients are not the lazy, able-bodied shirkers Republicans want you to believe they are.
Just 27 percent of Medicaid enrollees are adults who don’t have disabilities, and 60 percent of those people are already working. Having to jump through the administrative hurdles of proving that they have jobs or taking drug tests or doing whatever else a Republican governor or legislature says they have to do will discourage people from signing up. That’s the whole point here. One way or another, Republicans are going to make sure millions of people who they think are undeserving don’t get health care.