Virginia – Health Stew

[The Milbank Quarterly just published this new commentary that I wrote for their November 2018 edition.]

Ever since the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the expansion of Medicaid as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) must be optional rather than mandatory for states, health care advocates have worked heart and soul to convince their state governments to adopt the expansion. For Virginians, the moment arrived in 2018 after years of frustration—with a catch. The only politically viable pathway to expansion included a detested provision, known as the “work requirement,” that obligates many new enrollees to work or else forfeit coverage. What to do?

I explored this dilemma with health justice advocates in Virginia, the first state to confront work requirements that had not previously expanded Medicaid. In November 2017, Virginia voters elected a respected new Democratic governor named Ralph Northam along with an eye-popping jump in the number of Democrats in the state’s House of Delegates, leaving them just 2 votes shy of majorities in the House and Senate. In May 2018, solid bipartisan majorities formed to enact Medicaid expansion after years of discouraging defeats. The wrinkle was including a work requirement and imposing cost sharing on Medicaid beneficiaries. Continue reading “The Health Reformers’ Dilemma”