PA to Help Medicaid Beneficiaries Who Want to Work
While Pennsylvania does not have a mandatory work requirement for its Medicaid population, the state is taking a new approach to encouraging Medicaid beneficiaries to pursue work.
It is asking them if they want to work and then, if they say they do, directing them to help finding training an jobs.
As reported by Kaiser Health News,
Starting early next year, the Pennsylvania Medicaid agency under Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf will ask people when they enroll if they want job training assistance. It will then require its private Medicaid managed-care organizations to connect those who want help to local employment specialists and follow up to make sure they got it.
The Wolf administration has resisted legislative efforts to impose a work requirement on the state’s Medicaid population, with the governor twice vetoing legislation that would establish such a mandate. The legislature is expected to take up a similar bill next year because, as one of the bill’s co-sponsors explained, “What they are suggesting is a tiny step in the right direction, but we need to do so much more.”
Learn more in the Kaiser Health News story “States Try A Gentler Approach To Getting Medicaid Enrollees To Work.”
The proposal will be considered by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
Miller conveyed what a news release described as
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has vetoed a bill that included a requirement that certain Medicaid recipients either work or search for work.
Among the possibilities state lawmakers are discussing: tighter rules for participation, greater efficiency, work and work search requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, charging premiums for high-income families for which Medicaid provides coverage for their profoundly disabled children, and a pilot program to test whether a recipient care management program might eliminate medical errors, improve recipient health, and reduce health care costs.