Medicaid keeps workers healthy and employed. Work requirements make entire families sicker when people lose coverage.
Medicaid is an efficient, effective program for keeping 3 million Pennsylvanians healthy.
- Studies show that Medicaid provides access to comparable care at a significantly lower cost than private health insurance.
- The PA Department of Human Services found that Medicaid expansion created 15,000 new jobs and boosted the Commonwealth’s economy by $2.2 billion.
- Medicaid expansion keeps hospital doors open, creates health care jobs, and improves wages.
Medicaid cuts like work requirements take away health care from workers and families struggling to make ends meet.
Pennsylvanians who can work already work.
- 64% of Pennsylvania adults with Medicaid are working, while 32% are students, caregivers, or cannot work due to a serious illness, disability, or behavioral health treatment.
- Most low-wage workers don’t have access to health insurance through their employer. Only 28.5% of private sector employers in Pennsylvania offer health insurance to workers who earn less than $30,000 a year.
Work Requirements = Medicaid Cuts
- Work requirements target a very small number of Medicaid recipients but jeopardize everyone else’s coverage.
- Work requirements add red tape causing eligible people to lose access to vital care when they cannot navigate complicated paperwork. Additionally, overwhelmed county assistance offices (CAO) make mistakes or do not process paperwork on time.
- Over 200,000 Pennsylvanians would be at risk of losing coverage because they are newly subject to work requirements. Countless more will have their Medicaid put at risk because of new paperwork requirements, whether they are subject to them or not.
Work requirements waste millions of taxpayer dollars and hurt our state budget.
- Pennsylvania would have to develop a new system to identify, track, and document people who must meet work requirements and who would be exempt, costing the state millions of dollars.
- CAOs already face significant challenges managing complex eligibility systems and historic understaffing. CAO staff do not have the capacity to add overseeing work requirements on top of existing caseloads every month.
- Work requirements would drain taxpayer funds that could have gone to covering services and increase state spending on insurance.
Work requirements would result in workers losing their jobs when they become sick.
- Because many Medicaid enrollees work low-wage jobs that do not provide health insurance, Medicaid coverage is critical to building a healthy and stable workforce.
- Many low-wage jobs rely on physical labor. Without health insurance, workers who are injured or ill would not be able to get the care they need to stay employed.
Work requirements punish adults who cannot work, and they also harm children.
- People with disabilities and caregivers are supposed to be exempt from work requirements, but many will lose their benefits due to red tape.
- When parents lose health coverage, children who are eligible for Medicaid are much more likely to go uninsured.
