eAlert Wed, 10/31/2018 - 12:00

More than 200,000 people have gained health insurance through Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion. But last June, the state became the first to implement a program terminating Medicaid coverage for expansion enrollees who fail to report having worked at least 80 hours per month for three or more months. Two new posts on To the Point offer estimates of the impact of this policy on coverage and the resulting loss of federal funds flowing to the state.

Erin Brantley and Leighton Ku of George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health find that, over a one-year period, 30,700 to 48,300 adults would lose Medicaid coverage, out of about 160,000 adults subject to the requirements.

Using these estimates, Sherry Glied, dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, finds that Arkansas would lose between $220 million and $340 million in federal funds in 2020. The state’s own spending on medical assistance for this group would drop by $25 million to $40 million.

Arkansas state capitol_1x1 Read the posts Estimating the Impact of Arkansas’s Work Requirements