GoKawiilA federal judge on Thursday denied a request by more than two dozen Democratic states to halt a Trump administration policy announced last month that would require Medicaid recipients with terminal diseases to prove they are too sick to work in order to be exempt from new work requirements that go into effect this coming January.
While introducing over $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, last year's massive GOP tax and budget bill also imposed new 80-hour-per-month work requirements that states must implement for Medicaid expansion recipients, who receive government-subsidized insurance coverage at or below 138% of the poverty line.
The law specified that those who are “medically frail or otherwise have special medical needs” are excluded from the work requirement, and specifically listed people with a “serious or complex medical condition.” But it remained unclear what exact conditions met these criteria.
Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new rule stating that even if a person receives a terminal diagnosis for a disease like cancer, HIV/AIDS, or Parkinson's, that is still not enough for them to be exempt from the work requirements.
Beginning on January 1, 2028, it says they must also demonstrate to states that their condition “significantly impairs” their ability to meet the work requirement.
Democratic attorneys general in 25 states and the District of Columbia filed a preliminary injunction over the rule late last month, arguing that CMS had rewritten the law to introduce a vague and needlessly restrictive new hurdle that vulnerable people will face in obtaining desperately needed care.
“This is one of those cases where it’s really hard to overstate how dire the consequences could be,” North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general, Jeff Jackson, told Politico. “You’re going to have 50 states doing 50 different things, and we’re all going to have to create a whole new bureaucracy... You are talking about a lot more paperwork, more evaluations, more doctor visits, and a lot more work for doctors themselves.”
The Democratic AGs argued that implementation of the work requirements should be paused because they lacked the staff or capacity to meet the timeline set by CMS, which requires states to communicate to enrollees how they'll be affected by the changes by the end of August.
US District Judge Richard Stearns on Thursday denied their initial request to immediately halt the implementation of the requirements while the lawsuit proceeds, but also did not rule on the lawsuit's merits, which are scheduled to be decided before the requirements go into effect on January 1.
Several medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have come out against the rule, arguing that it would have dire consequences for people who suffer from severe illness.
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