Battle Over Obamacare
One of the ways the Trump administration has been chipping away at Obamacare is by approving state plans to attach work requirements to Medicaid. Now, one set of work requirement is going into effect: Arkansas is requiring Medicaid recipients to submit proof online that they work or searched for a job at least 80 hours per month. But Arkansas has the second-worst rate of home internet in the country; thousands of people missed the deadline and could lose their health care.
Get the full story, and catch up on other assaults on Obamacare, in Alice Ollstein’s Weekly Primer on health care (Prime access) →
Republicans made a point of railing against the health care law in past elections. But this year, Democrats are hoping that the popularity of the law’s Medicaid expansion will win them voters. For the first time since the law was created, Alice Ollstein writes in her Weekly Primer on Obamacare, Democrats are spending more on ads about it than Republicans are.
This comes as the Trump administration continues to chip away at various aspects of the law, dealing the latest blow this past weekend when it cut off risk-adjustment payments.