Michael Hiltzik: Reviving a cynical work requirement to limit Medicaid

Ignoring empirical evidence that it's fomenting a health care catastrophe, and a federal judge's warning that it's legally out of line, the Trump administration has quietly reapproved a punitive work requirement for Medicaid clients in Kentucky.

The approval came just before the Thanksgiving holiday. That's timing you use only in the hope that you'll be able to sneak through a policy without anybody noticing.

But this is such a cynical and malevolent policy that healthcare advocates did notice. That happened partially because data from Arkansas, the only other state given permission by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for Medicaid work requirements, show that its system is throwing residents off Medicaid by the thousands.

In its approval letter to Kentucky, the CMS "gives no indication that it considered, much less cared about, the ever-mounting disenrollments in Arkansas," Andy