Law360 quoted Manatt’s Deborah Bachrach, a partner with Manatt Health, for an article about Donald Trump’s pick for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, Seema Verma. Verma is likely to revisit waivers that focus on requiring beneficiaries to be employed, a caveat that hasn’t been accepted under the Obama administration.
“Under the Obama administration, imposing work requirements were rejected because CMS concluded Medicaid was about coverage, and while work is a very important goal and supporting people's efforts to find work is very important, conditioning coverage on employment was not consistent with goals of Medicaid program. A Trump administration could come in and conclude otherwise,” said Bachrach.
“If it’s imposed, what a work requirement will do is create more churning,” Bachrach said. “One of the things Medicaid has become so effective at is driving efficiencies and driving continuity of care and coverage, and once you start imposing more requirements as a condition of coverage you jeopardize Medicaid's effectiveness as a coverage vehicle.”
Read the article here.