The Republican campaign to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients is working as expected. [View all]

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Elizabeth Cloinger, 47, who lives in a trailer next to her cousin’s house just outside town, thought she was complying with the new rules. She has been on Medicaid for years and already had a job, working seven days most weeks as a home health aide. Her wages — 9.25 an hour, with 50 cents more for hospice patients — and her hours met the new rules. Yet she received a June letter saying she needed to verify that her income made her eligible, or she would be cut off.

She called the listed phone number and faxed information to a state employee in Pine Bluff. She was told that, like many people, she was exempt from the work requirements — in her case, because she was caring for her 20-year-old daughter recovering from a car accident and her 3-year-old granddaughter.

But on Aug. 18, she received another letter, saying she had been terminated because she had not verified her income. In December, four letters arrived saying she needed to update her email address, then 11 more in January. Each letter told her to create an online account. She doesn’t have a computer and didn’t realize that the program requires everyone to get an email address. This winter, she applied to get her insurance back and is still waiting for an answer. Statewide, about 1,900 of the 18,000 people cut off last year have regained coverage since January, when they could reapply. The state does not keep track of how many reapplied and were denied.

Being poor in this country is not only cruel and degrading, it's also been made insanely complicated. All of these qualities are deliberately created hardships courtesy of a political class for whom poverty is barely an issue any more. Poor people are always an issue, though. They're stealing Your Money and spending it on T-bones and Cadillacs. Poor people are convenient scapegoats. It's only poverty that's inconvenient.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a26964879/medicaid-work-requirements-arkansas-republicans/