The good news is federal government legal changes to discourage able-bodied adults without dependents who don’t want to use Medicaid as a bridge to reduced government dependency will allow the overwhelming majority of Louisianans to continue in the program. The bad news is for that reason taxpayers won’t see much savings.
The federal budget passed last year by Republican Pres. Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress introduced many changes coming to Medicaid, among which were community engagement requirements (working, studying, or volunteering for 80 hours a month) for ABAWD and increased eligibility checks for those Medicaid expansion recipients in states like Louisiana. The former removes Medicaid expansion as a crutch from achieving personal independence while the latter reduces waste, which according to the latest annual data available meant state taxpayers lost over $9 million from the expansion population (known; these were just the ones flagged), for which overall state taxpayers ponied up $489 million.
The requirement may end up cutting taxpayer costs in another way. Research notes that adding such a requirement doesn’t change short-term health outcomes and may improve them over the long run because of resulting increased upward economic mobility that allows escape from low-performing Medicaid service provision to better privately-insured care.
