As the Trump Administration Continues to Implement Their Big, Ugly Bill, Bicameral Health Care Leaders Call for Halt to New Red Tape Requirements That Will Lead to Massive Coverage Losses
Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and House Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J. last week called for full repeal of Medicaid work reporting requirements included in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and called on the Trump administration to reverse course on its rules to implement these provisions that will result in millions of eligible Americans losing their health insurance through Medicaid due to new layers of red tape and complexity.
“Work reporting requirements will not increase employment and will instead lead to millions of Americans needlessly losing their health coverage. No variation of this policy is workable and we support full repeal,” the Ranking Members wrote. “This rule transforms Medicaid from a health care program into a bureaucratic maze that will fail eligible Americans, by design. It will strip coverage from people not because they are not already working or refuse to work, but because they cannot navigate a complex web of forms, passwords, and deadlines.”
The letter makes clear that the work reporting requirements policy in the Republican bill is unworkable, cruel, and contrary to the purpose Medicaid was created to serve. Previous attempts to implement these requirements resulted in high costs and harm to eligible people. In Georgia’s first year using work reporting requirements, the state spent five times as much on administrative costs as on health care benefits for enrollees.
Wyden and Pallone also emphasized that the Trump administration’s definition of medical frailty far exceeds what is outlined in the law itself, and creates additional onerous barriers for both patients and states that will result in sick Americans falling through the cracks.
Wyden and Pallone have been clear for years that these approaches are not health care policy. They are an attempt to suffocate the Medicaid program and bury the Americans who count on it in red tape. The only winners of this effort will be third-party middlemen who stand to make billions helping states design and implement these bureaucratic mazes.
The text of the letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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