A Wisconsin health care advocate says Medicaid “work requirements” are not what they seem. The Trump administration last week issued guidance for states that want to require eligible able-bodied adults to have jobs to qualify for Medicaid.
In Wisconsin, that means Badgercare. “It tries to make it sound like people who need Badgercare for their healthcare are somehow doing the wrong thing, refusing to work, while it’s quite the contrary,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. Kraig said many people on the state’s Medicaid program already work.
A spokeswoman for Governor Scott Walker says the change will “give the state greater flexibility, and allow the state to help more families move from government dependence to real independence by serving as a work incentive.”
Kraig says the action is “extremely mean spirited, and is simply an attempt to create barriers and hoops that the Walker administration knows will cause a lot of people to lose their healthcare.”