Some 908,900 Arkansans may become infected with the novel coronavirus over the course of the next six months, according to an epidemiological model of the spread of COVID-19 in Arkansas provided by the Arkansas Hospital Association to its members today. Among those who become infected, an estimated 190,800 Arkansans may need hospital care and 41,400 may need to be hospitalized in intensive care units in the next six months, according to the projections.
A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirement led to lower insurance rates among 30- to 49-year-olds in 2018, the group targeted by the first-of-its-kind work rule last year. The researchers also concluded that the policy did not lead to a rise in employment among this target population.
The Arkansas House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill to fund the state’s Medicaid program on Tuesday, completing legislative action on the appropriation and handing a victory to Governor Hutchinson.
Two days after a federal judge halted Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation work requirement for certain Medicaid beneficiaries, the state House of Representatives rejected the entire Medicaid budget by a large margin on Friday.
Governor Hutchinson said Thursday he has urged Trump administration officials to appeal a federal judge’s order blocking Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation Medicaid work requirement.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg on Wednesday halted Arkansas’s experimental work requirement for certain Medicaid expansion beneficiaries, the only program of its kind in the country. The judge also blocked Kentucky’s plans to implement a similar program.
A federal judge in the District of Columbia heard oral arguments Thursday morning in a lawsuit challenging Arkansas’s work requirement for certain Medicaid expansion beneficiaries. Immediately afterward, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg heard arguments in a related suit over Kentucky’s efforts to implement a similar policy.
Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation work requirement for certain Medicaid beneficiaries expanded in January to include some 45,000 additional people.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., released an analysis Jan. 10 summing up the many criticisms of Arkansas’s experimental work requirement for certain Medicaid beneficiaries.
Almost 17,000 Arkansans have now lost their health insurance due to the state’s experimental work requirement for certain low-income adult Medicaid beneficiaries, according to a monthly report released by the state Department of Human Services on Monday.
