White House: 60% of Eligible Medicaid Recipients Do Not Meet Work Requirements

The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report that found most non-disabled working-age adult Medicaid recipients work less than 20 hours per week.

As nearly a dozen states consider implementing work requirements for Medicaid recipients, the White House has released new data on the non-disabled working-age adults enrolled in the program.

The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a report Thursday on the Trump administration's reform of federal welfare programs, focusing on the population most likely to be affected by the proposed Medicaid work requirements.

The report also included information on non-disabled working-age adults who receive federal welfare assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and rental housing assistance programs.

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CMS announced in January that it would consider submissions from states for Medicaid work requirement waivers. Kentucky received the first approval for a Medicaid work requirement plan, which would mandate recipients work 20 hours per week, totalling 80 hours per month. Since then, CMS has approved plans for four states and are reviewing seven other pending waivers.

However, only three states have begun implementing Medicaid work requirements, as Kentucky's proposed waiver plan was struck down by a federal judge last month. In recent days, CMS Administrator Seema Verma indicated that the agency plans to appeal the decision.

Below are the statistical highlights from the White House economic report on Medicaid work requirements:

• 61% of Medicaid recipients are non-disabled working-age adults

• There are 28 million non-disabled working age adult Medicaid recipients and 22.2 million child recipients

• Between 22 and 28% of non-disabled working-age adults on Medicaid live in a house where the youngest child is between one and five-years-old

• Between 19 and 14% of non-disabled working-age adults live in a household where the youngest child is between 6 and 17-years-old

• 60% of non-disabled working-age recipients worked less than 20 hours per week

• Non-disabled working-age adults without children are less likely to work than are those with children.

• The highest percentage out of that group were non-disabled working-age adults without children between the age of 50 and 64-years-old, at 72%

• 78% of all non-disabled working-age adults work less than 40 hours per week, which constitutes full-time employment

• Medicaid is the largest non-cash welfare program, receiving $566 billion in funding for its 71 million beneficiaries.  

• Between 1969 and 2017, the share of the population covered by Medicaid grew from 6 to 22%

The CEA listed three reasons that supported the administration's push to implement Medicaid work requirements:

1. Decades of declining self-sufficiency, hampered by economic hardship, could be addressed by increased motivation through work requirements.

2. Other options to that could serve as an "alternative solution of increasing positive incentives for work," might raise high implicit taxes on low-skill part-time workers exponentially.

3. The White House argued that welfare programs with work requirements in exchange for benefits increase employment and could improve outcomes for children.

"The timing is ideal for expanding work requirements among non-disabled working-age adults in social welfare programs," the report stated. "As was the case in the period of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, current labor markets are extremely tight and unemployment rates are at very low levels, even for low-skilled workers."

"Quite the opposite of harming people, expanded work requirements can improve the lives of current welfare recipients and at the same time respect the importance and dignity of work."