Former President Trump made it very clear during his presidency that he supported Medicaid work requirements. Indeed, the former Administrator for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Seema Verma, under Trump’s administration, issued policy memoranda on how states could submit Section 1115 waivers in search of work requirement approval.

Thereafter, several states submitted such waivers, including Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Indiana, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Utah, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. Kentucky was the first to attempt to implement such work requirements. Under that waiver program, each Medicaid recipient would be required to work, look for work, or participate in volunteer work for 80 hours each month. If the requirement wasn’t met, Medicaid coverage would be lost for 6 months. There were several exceptions to the rule, such as for pregnant women, full-time students, primary caregivers to dependents, the elderly, and the disabled.

As we see the light at the end of the (COVID) tunnel, we are optimistic that in-person events will again be part of our marketing strategy in the not-too-distant future. However, if COVID has taught us anything, it is that a strong online presence and content marketing strategy is critical—and this reality is unlikely to change after the pandemic. 

In a recent case out of Ohio, a court of appeals analyzed whether the state could recover child support arrears from the estate of a Medicaid recipient. Here, Betty was the legal guardian of her grandchildren, Emily and Bradley. Their father was under court order to pay child support, with Betty as obligee. After both children reached the age of majority, Betty died intestate.