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Committee kills bill to add work requirements to Medicaid recipients [1]
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Date: 2024-02-01
Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, presenting HB 419 to the House Health and Welfare Committee on Feb. 1, before the committee voted to hold the bill. (Morgan McCollum/Idaho Reports)
By Ruth Brown, Idaho Reports
The House Health and Welfare Committee killed a bill on Thursday that would have added work requirements for able-bodied recipients and potentially jeopardized Medicaid expansion.
The committee heard more than two hours of testimony against the bill, with only two people testifying in support of it. Ultimately, members voted 8-5 to hold the HB 419 in committee, which stops it from moving forward.
Most people who testified had concerns not only about the work requirements, but a provision that would repeal Medicaid expansion if the Department of Health and Welfare could not meet 11 new requirements by July 2025. Those conditions included capping expansion enrollment and adding work requirements for able bodied adults.
The idea isn’t new. In 2019, the Legislature passed a bill that would have added some work requirements for Medicaid recipients, but the federal government never granted the waiver to the state.
Medicaid expansion passed in 2018 through a voter initiative, with 61% of the vote in support. Today, more than 100,000 people use Medicaid for health insurance in Idaho. The cost of Medicaid has been a longstanding issue for Legislature, as last year’s Medicaid budget was the largest passed in Idaho history.
The bill sponsor, Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, said the bill was intended to put guardrails on the Medicaid budget and reduce abuse of the program. Redman invited Scott Centorino, of the Foundation for Government Accountability, to explain the bill and field questions.
Notably, the bill also would have put a cap on Medicaid expansion enrollment at 50,000 people or the total number of adults enrolled in Medicaid who are disabled or over 65.
Rep. Josh Wheeler, R-Ammon, questioned how the state would handle the cap if applicants were equally qualified to receive Medicaid.
“How do we determine which of them stay, and which of them go?” Wheeler asked.
Centorino said that would be a decision IDHW would need to make.
Additionally, the bill would have limited able-bodied adults from receiving Medicaid for more than 36 months over their lifetime, a concern that repeatedly came up in testimony.
David Lehman spoke in opposition to the bill on behalf of Cottonwood Creek, the Idaho Association of Community Providers, and the AARP. He argued the system was not prepared to handle the change.
“The analogy to this is it asks Idaho to jump off a cliff and try to build a plane before we hit the ground,” Lehman said.
Other testimony came from people with medical and mental health issues, concerned about how the bill would affect their health if they lost coverage.
Laura Scuri, representing the Idaho Association of Community Providers, said Medicaid expansion opened doors for people with mental illness, substance use disorders and disabilities.
“This bill is catastrophic,” Scuri said. “There is absolutely no reason to implement a bill that is this traumatic. There are thousands of people right now working behind the scenes in our state to develop a system of care that is the right service, at the right time, for the right price.”
Scuri said the bill is coming from outside of Idaho, taking aim at Centorino’s organization, and said it doesn’t take into account Idaho’s system of care.
“This bill is the tank that will decimate health care in Idaho,” Scuri said.
Maggie Lyons, executive director for the Panhandle Affordable Housing Alliance, was one of two people who testified in favor of the bill.
“Work requirements are needed,” Lyons said. “Annually confirming eligibility is responsible and necessary. We have learned in our work that work awakens worth.”
The committee also heard from multiple physicians from Idaho, saying it would jeopardize care.
Dr. Loren Colson, told the committee that hospitals and clinics would have to absorb the costs, saying it would harm hundreds of thousands of patients.
“The stipulations to continue Medicaid expansion in this bill are unreasonable and unattainable,” Colson told the committee. “There are parts of this bill that simply cannot be done by July of 2025. There are other parts that are clearly discriminatory.”
The committee members who supported holding the bill in committee included Reps. Marco Erickson, R-Idaho Falls, Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, Chenele Dixon, R-Kimberly, Dori Healey, R-Boise, Wheeler, Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, and Nate Roberts, D-Pocatello.
Not all who voted to hold the bill were against putting sideboards on Medicaid; Blanksma was one of the architects of the 2019 work requirement legislation, and pointed out that those efforts took extensive time, research, and negotiation, and still got rejected by the federal government.
Members who voted against holding the bill included Reps. Mike Kingsley, R-Lewiston, Brandon Mitchell, R-Moscow, Jacyn Gallagher, R-Weiser, Redman and chairman John VanderWoude, R-Nampa.
Ruth Brown | Producer Ruth Brown grew up in South Dakota and her first job out of college was covering the South Dakota Legislature. She’s since moved on to Idaho lawmakers. Brown spent 10 years working in print journalism, including newspapers such as the Idaho Statesman and Idaho Press, where she’s covered everything from the correctional system to health care issues. She joined Idaho Reports in 2021 and looks forward to telling stories about how state policy can impact the lives of regular Idahoans. Read more by Ruth Brown Follow Ruth on Twitter
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https://blog.idahoreports.idahoptv.org/2024/02/01/committee-kills-bill-to-add-work-requirements-to-medicaid-recipients/
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