By Abe Sutton
In the context of limited regulatory resources, Trump’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) prioritized allowing states to impose work requirements over Medicaid fiscal reform.
Now that the Trump Administration’s term in office has ended, it is worth exploring, with the benefit of hindsight, the value of this decision. Setting aside moral arguments used to criticize Medicaid work requirements, administering the requirements proved to be challenging, as did justifying them in court. Additionally, amid indications Medicaid work requirements will not be politically sustainable, it is worth considering whether Medicaid fiscal reform would have led to more significant taxpayer savings.
In this post, I provide an overview of Medicaid work requirements and explore some of the reforms included in the Medicaid fiscal reform proposal CMS ultimately chose not to implement.