Arkansas stripped Medicaid coverage for more than 4,500 state residents because they failed to meet new work requirements, according to a new report.
The state’s program is being heavily scrutinized as the Trump administration has encouraged states to add work requirements to their Medicaid program.
The 4,574 enrollees originally had until 9 p.m. on Wednesday to report their work hours or get an exemption for August to restore their coverage or they would be locked out of Medicare for the rest of 2018, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. However, the state said that it can extend the deadline by a month for enrollees that had trouble getting online and using the state’s system to report work hours or apply for an exemption to the work rule.
The program requires that able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries spend 20 hours a week either volunteering, job training, pursuing education or working. Any worker that doesn’t comply for three months gets their coverage cut off.
The work requirement program only applies to the Medicaid expansion.
Arkansas’ state government reported in July that there were 7,464 people who didn’t satisfy the online reporting requirement under the program.
Arkansas is one of four states that have gotten approval from the Trump administration to set up work requirements. New Hampshire, Indiana and Kentucky are the other states.
However, a federal judge has blocked Kentucky’s work requirement program from going into effect, saying that the program was arbitrary.
