The Reality Of Medicaid Work Requirements: Life In Job-Scarce Arkansas County Paints Picture Of Confusion, Helplessness

For people in a low-income, struggling county in Arkansas the idea that there are just jobs out there waiting for them now that they're being faced with work requirements for their Medicaid program is almost laughable. Now, residents are having to skip care after they're dropped from the rolls. “I am just putting it in God’s hands,” said Elizabeth Cloinger, 47. “He is going to let me stay on this Earth to see my grandbaby be raised.”

The Washington Post: A Job-Scarce Town Struggles With Arkansas’s First-In-Nation Medicaid Work Rules
At the center of Court Square in this old Mississippi Delta town, the monument to the county’s Confederate dead is inscribed: “No braver bled for a brighter land. No brighter land had a cause so grand. ”It has been a long time since Marianna or surrounding Lee County could be described as bright. Along the square, a storefront funeral home sits empty, along with two former drugstores, a department store, a jeweler, a barber. Gone, too, is Ronny’s dollar store, which let customers buy clothes on layaway. The National Guard Armory closed down and became a senior center, until that also closed. (Goldstein, 3/26)

In other news —

Kaiser Health News: Medicaid Expansion Boosts Hospital Bottom Lines — And Prices
The Medicaid expansion promoted by the Affordable Care Act was a boon for St. Mary’s Medical Center, the largest hospital in western Colorado. Since 2014, the number of uninsured patients it served dropped by more than half, saving the nonprofit hospital more than $3 million a year. But the Grand Junction hospital’s prices did not go down. “St. Mary’s is still way too costly,” said Mike Stahl, CEO of Hilltop Community Resources, which provides insurance to about half of its nearly 600 employees and their families in western Colorado. (Galewitz, 3/27)

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