Georgia to Become First State to Require Work for Medicaid Coverage

PJ Media ^ | 11/20/2022 | Rick Moran

[SeekAndFind]

The state of Georgia is preparing to offer a limited number of lower-income people Medicaid coverage in exchange for 80 hours of work or volunteering a month.

The Biden administration surprisingly decided not to appeal a federal court ruling that granted Georgia the right to try the work-for-Medicaid program — a program first approved during the Trump administration for 12 states but later canceled by Biden.

The program will actually cost significantly more than standard Medicaid coverage and the program’s strict requirements won’t cover a lot of Georgians. But Kemp believes it’s worth doing.

“The best-case scenario is that some uninsured Georgians would get coverage for some amount of time,’’ Laura Colbert, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future, told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. “It’s going to be a big headache for the state and for people who enroll or try to enroll.”

Georgia’s per-enrollee cost for the work requirement program is expected to be at least three times higher than it would be under a regular Medicaid expansion, said Colbert.

The federal government would have paid for at least 90% of the costs of insuring hundreds of thousands of Georgians under a full expansion. That compares with the expected 67% matching rate from the feds under the slimmer Kemp plan. And that difference doesn’t account for a Biden administration incentive for expansion that would net Georgia $710 million, according to a KFF estimate.

Indeed, barriers to enrollment will keep most poor Georgians off the rolls. “Full-time caregivers, people with mental health conditions or substance use disorders, and people unable to work but who have not yet qualified for disability coverage would find it hard to qualify,” reports the AJC.

[TomServo]

Get to work damnit.

[hanamizu]

This will be denounced by all right-thinking people as a ‘return to slavery’.

[Ann Archy]

GOOD!! FINALLY!!!

[bitt]

p

[bitt]

they will just lie, anyway, about ‘service’...just like they lie about looking for work for unemployment benefits..

kinda like those who got ‘covid relief..”

[Soul of the South]

There is a social justice group ready to file a class action suit against this program as soon as the first person is signed up. Then a Obama, Clinton or Bush appointed federal judge will immediately kill it.

[moovova]

Racist.

[EBH]

80 hours of work gets them dropped from medicaid

[Seaplaner]

The alleged poor won't like this.

They could always move from the state.

Maybe they are more generous in Martha's Vineyard.

[frank ballenger]

Work would be like exercise for people used to lying around watching others go to their jobs. What a concept.

In 1969 Yoko Ono was asked by a reporter if she and John Lennon did any exercise.
“We’re both heroin addicts. That’s a form of exercise.”

[Qwapisking]

ABOUTDAMNTIME!

[newzjunkey]

Ok so this is for people with no coverage right now under existing Medicaid and the state will cover them if they work 20 hours a week. Or volunteer 20 hours a week. And the press only sees this as burdensome, cruel and costly to the state because Georgia won’t be feeding as much at the federal trough? Right away it reveals their bias towards socialism, central planning, etc. Where’s the balance?

I’m so very very tired of the endless apocalyptic negativity toward Republican ideas and blind fawning over Democrat schemes. There’s no introspection, no analysis of why Democrat urban areas are cesspools of crime, homelessness and decay. There’s no accountability for the one party that runs the cities and those states. Oh but what about those trying to get disability but haven’t gotten it yet? Good grief! Death by 1000 what aboutisms!