How the AHCA work requirement will impact Medicaid: 4 facts

Republican lawmakers introduced several changes to Medicaid through several revisions to the American Health Care Act March 20, 2017. NPR examined the work requirement's potential impact.

Legislators added a provision where state governors could decide whether to require Medicaid beneficiaries to have active employment to qualify for coverage. Lawmakers introduced the provision to attract additional votes from conservative Republicans, NPR reports.

Here are four ways the AHCA could potentially impact Medicaid, if implemented:

1. Policy analysts believe the work requirement would implement another barrier to healthcare, while having little effect on potential savings. Analysts believe "a small subsection of Medicaid beneficiaries that are responsible for a smaller portion of total spending would be affected." according to NPR.

2. More than half of all Medicaid recipients are employed and 78 percent live in households where an adult works.

3. Unemployed people often have medical limitations preventing them from reaching full-disability status. Analysts believe a work requirement would unlikely help them get a job, NPR reports.

4. Elizabeth Lower-Basch, director of income and work supports at the liberal leaning, Washington, D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy, referenced welfare reform under former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s as an example of a failed work requirement.

President Clinton implemented a work requirement on welfare recipients that kicked several people off the program and increased the child poverty rate.

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