CBO: Medicaid work requirements cost states millions.
Medicaid work requirements were a contentious issue when first unveiled in states like Arkansas.
In theory, it sounded like a solid proposal – contribute to your local economy, and get rewarded with Medicaid coverage / public welfare.
Then, questions arose about the implementation of the said proposal. How would the reporting work? Who would hold the individuals accountable? Not to mention scrutiny the policy received from court.
No one really knew whether the Medicaid work requirements were ‘working’ (haha) or not.
This week, we received the first data point: a federal report indicated that Medicaid work requirements are actually costing states millions based on the administrative costs required to run these programs.
Read the full federal report here.
More Policy: Pelosi’s Plan passes a Key House committee.
A few more developments emerged from the Pelosi Drug Pricing camp this week (which still has no chance of passing the Senate as long as Mitch McConnell is around).
The drug pricing bill advanced through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but still must pass through 2 more committees before it reaches the floor.
Pelosi’s Plan gets Vetted by the CBO, Others.
In other news, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the drug pricing proposal, finding that the plan would potentially save Medicare around $370 billion over 6 years by imposing price controls.
Democrats were huge fans of this news, while Big Pharma and Republicans stressed that any proposal that reduced drug revenues this drastically – estimated between $500 billion and $1 trillion – would result in severely less innovation for new drugs entering the market.
While the bigger pharmaceutical companies would most likely survive, the smaller biotech incubators rely on a lot of early stage financing from investors willing to invest in risky assets.
If the reward were to become much more muted, would this investment in biotech small caps still happen? Of course, this is all hypothetical.
Other Policy Updates – 2019’s remaining agenda, Elizabeth Warren gets pressed on healthcare, and keep the looming ACA ruling in mind.
Here are Congress and the White House’s healthcare initiatives to keep an eye on as 2019 comes to a close (where does the time go??).
In case you missed it, here’s our timeline of Surprise Billing updates for 2019.
Elizabeth Warren received some flack (paywall – WSJ) for her lack of detail with her Medicare for All proposal, including how the plan would be funded.
She’s expected to release some information soon after dodging questions about it in the debate this week. Read more background here.
Finally, keep in mind that the ACA ruling is expected to happen any day now (paywall – WSJ). Some states are scrambling to keep the ACA in place until a new health law is formed.
The White House also has indicated continual support for the ACA until a replacement takes shape (that is, if the law gets struck down).