Trio of GOP proposals would overhaul Medicaid dramatically, starting with job requirement

A contingent of House Republicans is trying to push the nation’s health insurance program for poor and vulnerable Americans deep into conservative territory, past a firewall that the Obama administration maintained for eight years.

A partisan vote Thursday afternoon by the House Budget Committee would require able-bodied adults to hold a job in order to qualify for Medicaid. That profound change has long been popular on the far right as a way to promote personal responsibility but opposed by Democrats who fear it would deny health care to many people who need it the most.

Compelling people to work, which would align Medicaid with a similar requirement in the nation’s main welfare program, was one of a trio of moves that committee Republicans recommended as they approved the legislation they hope will begin to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
Over protests from Democratic lawmakers, the panel also recommended that an expansion of Medicaid under the ACA be dismantled sooner than the GOP’s proposed American Health Care Act envisions. And committee members voted that states should be able to convert Medicaid from an entitlement program — covering anyone who is eligible — into a block grant, under which the federal government would provide a state a fixed annual sum and free it from federal rules spelling out which people qualify and what health benefits must be provided.

Friday morning, President Trump declared that he was “100 percent” behind the work requirement and block-grant