Impact of potential work requirements for Michigan’s expanded Medicaid population

Impact of potential work requirements for Michigan’s expanded Medicaid population

In early 2018, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that states could require Medicaid recipients to work a minimum number of hours to qualify for Medicaid coverage. Following this, the State of Michigan introduced a bill that would require most of Michigan’s expanded Medicaid population–Healthy Michigan Plan enrollees–to work at least 80 hours per month to continue to receive health care coverage. Under the proposed bill, if enrollees failed to meet monthly requirements for three months, coverage would be suspended until the enrollee came back into compliance. CHRT’s first work requirements fact sheet compared Michigan’s bill to similar policies in other states and predicted the impact such a policy would have on Michiganders—estimating that 5-10% of Michiganders could lose coverage if the bill were to be approved.