Medicaid Work Requirements In Arkansas: Two-Year Impacts On Coverage, Employment, And Affordability Of Care.

ABSTRACT: In June 2018 Arkansas became the first US state to implement work requirements in Medicaid, requiring adults ages 30-49 to work twenty hours a week, participate in "community engagement" activities, or qualify for an exemption to maintain coverage. By April 2019, when a federal judge put the policy on hold, 18,000 adults had already lost coverage. We analyze the policy's effects before and after these events, using a telephone survey performed in late 2019 of 2,706 low-income adults in Arkansas and three control states compared with data from 2016 and 2018. We have four main findings. First, most of the Medicaid coverage losses in 2018 were reversed in 2019 after the court order. Second, work requirements did not increase employment over eighteen months of follow-up. Third, people in Arkan

SUBMITTER: Sommers BD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7497731 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature