Category: News Releases

Arise Citizens’ Policy Project policy director Jim Carnes issued the following statement Wednesday, May 9, 2018, in response to President Trump’s proposal to cut $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP):

“The last thing Alabama parents need is yet more uncertainty about their children’s health coverage. But just four months after Congress reached an agreement on long-term CHIP funding, President Trump is seeking to go back on the deal by cutting $7 billion from the program. Violating this year’s bipartisan agreement would sound an alarm not just for CHIP but for the prospect of meaningful action on any other vital issues facing Congress in the future.

“This proposed cut would undermine CHIP, which provides health coverage for 173,000 Alabama children, including 85,000 on ALL Kids. The cut would do major damage to a rainy day account that protects CHIP against unexpected enrollment increases caused by economic downturns or natural disasters. It also could set the stage for lower federal support for CHIP in the future.

“Alabama knows all too well how suddenly calamities can occur, and it’s essential to ensure CHIP can afford to cover all the kids who need it. Millions of American families, including tens of thousands across Alabama, already endured months of uncertainty after Congress let CHIP funding expire before approving a 10-year extension. These hard-working parents deserve to know those worries are behind them.

“Early statements from the administration have sent mixed messages about what effect the cuts will have. But no matter how you slice it, a $7 billion reduction in CHIP funding would be bad news for children’s health coverage. Alabama’s members of Congress should protect children and working families by rejecting this harmful cut.”

Alabama’s proposed new Medicaid work requirement waiver would be costly, counterproductive, ineffective and harmful to thousands of families who live in deep poverty, Arise Citizens’ Policy Project wrote in official comments submitted to state Medicaid officials on Thursday, March 22, 2018.

“Threatening loss of health care in an attempt to force work efforts, without providing the supports that would make those work attempts successful, is flagrantly cruel and will result in no outcome other than poorer, more desperate and less healthy Alabama families,” Arise’s comments concluded.

Medicaid covers about 1 million Alabamians. Of that total, the waiver would target 7.5 percent of them – about 75,000 adults with extremely low incomes who qualify for Medicaid as parents or other caretaker relatives of children. Alabamians in this group are ineligible for Medicaid if their incomes exceed 18 percent of the federal poverty level (about $312 a month for a family of three).

Because Alabama has not expanded Medicaid to cover adults with incomes below the poverty level, the state’s work requirement plan would create a “catch-22 that forces people into the coverage gap,” Arise wrote. About 300,000 Alabamians already are caught in the coverage gap, earning too much for Medicaid but too little to qualify for federal subsidies for Marketplace plans.

Parents who work just 10 hours a week at minimum wage earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. But the state’s proposal would require them to engage in work-related activities between 20 to 35 hours a week. That would leave thousands of Alabama parents in a no-win situation: They would lose their Medicaid coverage if they don’t work – and also if they do. Virtually all of them would end up uninsured, without access to employer-provided coverage or an affordable private plan.

Alabama’s proposal does not project the state’s cost to track Medicaid enrollees’ work activities and exemptions. It also does not identify whether or how the state would invest in child care, job training, transportation and other supports that low-income parents need to get and keep work.

Arise’s full comments on Alabama’s proposed Medicaid work requirement waiver are available here.

Alabama’s bid to impose a work requirement on parents receiving Medicaid could cost as many as 8,700 people their health coverage in the first year, mainly affecting mothers whose children also would feel the impact, according to a new analysis by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) and Arise Citizens’ Policy Project (ACPP).

The proposal would create a Catch-22 for these families who already live well below the poverty line: Any parent working the 20 to 35 hours required under the state proposal would make too much money to qualify for Medicaid – but likely not enough to afford private insurance. These harsh new restrictions would disproportionately hurt families living in Alabama’s rural communities and small towns where jobs are scarce.

“Alabama’s proposal creates more barriers to Medicaid coverage and will not help families rise out of poverty. In fact, the opposite is true – many parents and children are likely to lose health coverage, which exposes them to greater financial instability,” said Joan Alker, director of the Georgetown University research center. “It’s hard enough to raise a family on such a limited income without someone putting more roadblocks in the way.”

Alabama is not the first state to seek a work requirement, but it is one of the first to do so without accepting federal funding to expand Medicaid to adults with incomes slightly above the poverty line (138 percent of the federal poverty level). Around 300,000 Alabamians are caught in the coverage gap, earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to qualify for subsidies for marketplace coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

In Alabama, only the poorest parents and caregivers, those making 18 percent of the poverty level or less – $3,740 a year for a family of three, or about $312 a month – now qualify for Medicaid. That is the strictest eligibility requirement in the nation (along with Texas). Because Alabama has not expanded Medicaid, the work requirement would apply only to parents with extremely low incomes.

The analysis found that among this population:
•    More than 85 percent are women.
•    60 percent are not in the workforce, in many cases because they are caring for someone else or have an illness or disability; 24 percent describe themselves as unemployed. The remainder are already reporting some work.
•    58 percent are African American; 40 percent are white.
•    35 percent are young parents under age 30.

A proposal for a Medicaid work requirement, now undergoing a state public comment period before submission to the federal government, could prove disastrous for many Alabama families, ACPP policy director Jim Carnes said.

“The goal of this cruel, counterproductive plan is to take health insurance away from thousands of Alabamians who are living in desperate poverty,” Carnes said. “By creating barriers to coverage rather than promoting it, Alabama’s work requirement fails the most fundamental test for Medicaid policy changes.”

Alabama’s proposal also seeks to trim eligibility for Transitional Medical Assistance – despite the fact that TMA is designed specifically to provide stability in health coverage for families whose incomes are increasing because they are working more.

In addition, the proposal could fuel an increase in the number of Alabama children without health coverage, according to the report, because uninsured parents are more likely to have uninsured children. Alabama’s rate of uninsured children – just 2.4 percent – is the lowest in the South. Overall, children and families in Alabama’s rural communities and small towns are more likely to use Medicaid coverage to meet their health care needs than those in metropolitan areas, a 2017 Georgetown University CCF/University of North Carolina study showed.

“As a pediatrician practicing in rural Alabama for 37 years, I have seen firsthand what happens when parents cannot access health care: Their children’s health suffers,” said Dr. Marsha Raulerson, who is a pediatrician in Brewton and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “If approved, the Alabama Medicaid work requirement would be a step backwards for a state that has been a national leader in covering children.”