New Medicaid work rule bring paperwork hurdles
By Katie Sobko
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... The new federal work requirements for Medicaid access are set to take effect in January, [2027] but it may be paperwork that affects eligibility, a new report says.
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Analysis from New Jersey Policy Perspective found that about 540,000 people in the state would be affected by the work requirement starting January 1, 2027.
..... Renewals will be required every six months instead of once a year, a change the report indices is likely to cause issues.
.... Reporting requirements are complex and can create barriers for people with variable work schedules, varied employment and work activity arrangements, limited Internet access, language barriers or frequent address changes.
..... About 64% of Medicaid-eligible adults in the United States already work full- or part-time.
..... The reports says residents who qualify thorough the medicaid expansion but do not meet the $580-per-month minimum income threshold will have to provide documentation of the hours worked. It involves paperwork form a supervisor being submitted each month to the state, and if that information can't be verified, the state must issue a formal notice of noncompliance and allowed 30 days for enrollees to show that they are compliant.
..... Every step of that process runs the risk of something being misplaced, delayed or unnavigable, which could lead to ineligibility.
..... There are other impacts to people losing access to Medicaid coverage.
..... New Jersey's Medicaid program, called NJ FamilyCare, is the state's most expensive government program, costing taxpayers $24 billion, with the federal government providing about $14 billion and rest coming from the state budget.
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About 300,000 of New Jersey's 1.8 million Medicaid enrollees are expected to lose coverage starting in January [2027] under cuts outlined in trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill act."
..... That could cost the state upward of $669 million more a year in uncompensated hospital care, the report projects.
..... This isn't the first time this sort of shift in coverage has happened. During the pandemic, more than 490,000 residents lost coverage, and about 75% of those cuts were for procedural reasons rather than because they no longer qualified.
..... "Work requirements do not get more people working, They get eligible people buried in paperwork until they lose their health coverage," said Jennifer Spiegel, one of the report's authors. "New Jersey still has time to build a system that catches people before they fall through the cracks."
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In an effort to prevent the loss of coverage, the report recommends a statewide outreach and enrollment support program, clear guidance with a way to submit and track documentation, prioritizing existing data and self-attestation over new paperwork requirements, and creating a "bridge program" so resident who lose coverage over paperwork issue are not immediately uninsured.