Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is asking the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to allow the state to impose a work requirement on certain Medicaid beneficiaries.
“I am submitting a waiver on behalf of the state of Arkansas to allow us to implement a work requirement for all able-bodied, working-age recipients of Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion program, ARHOME,” said the Jan. 28 letter to HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “There are 220,000 able-bodied, working-age adults in Arkansas receiving free health care courtesy of the taxpayer, costing us more than $2.2 billion each year—and growing.
“Of those recipients, estimates show nearly 90,000 have no job. Most Arkansans work hard to pay for their health insurance while these healthy adults do not work at all. That is a backward, broken system.”…