How many Ohio Medicaid expansion enrollees have jobs?

By Jason Hart  April 15, 2016  News No Comments @ Ohio Watchdog

 

Part 25 of 25 in the series Ohio's Obamacare expansion

 

Critics of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s push to expand Medicaid to childless, able-bodied, working-age adults warned the policy would be a disincentive to work.
A little over two years later, how many enrollees in Kasich’s Medicaid expansion under the 2010 federal health law are unemployed? No one — not even the Ohio Department of Medicaid — knows.
During budget negotiations last spring, ODM told Ohio Senate members that 43 percent of the enrollees in the Obamacare expansion referred to internally as “Group VIII” were employed.

Mary Gerlach, a member of ODM’s legal staff, provided more current enrollment information to Watchdog.org — but she could not say how many of the state’s 673,000 Obamacare expansion enrollees have jobs.

“ODM does not track how many Group VIII enrollees are unemployed,” Gerlach said. She shared an August presentation from ODM director John McCarthy indicating that 55 percent of Obamacare expansion enrollees were working or were married to a working spouse.

Obamacare expansion enrollees’ employment status is not the only pertinent data the most expensive arm of the state government doesn’t track.

“ODM does not maintain records detailing how many Group VIII enrollees had private or employer-sponsored health insurance prior to enrolling in Medicaid, and how many enrollees are incarcerated,” Gerlach told Watchdog.org.

Before Obamacare, Medicaid was restricted to the disabled, the elderly, children, pregnant women and impoverished families. Obamacare expansion makes anyone with income at or below 138 percent of poverty eligible for the welfare program.

Jonathan Ingram, vice president of research at the free-market Foundation for Government Accountability, said Medicaid expansion is “a massive new welfare cliff” that will discourage enrollees from seeking employment.

“ObamaCare supporters promised that Medicaid expansion would serve the ‘working poor,’ but the Ohio Department of Medicaid reported last year that nearly 60 percent of expansion enrollees don’t work at all,” Ingram told Watchdog.org. “Now, the administration says they don’t even know how many able-bodied adults receiving this Medicaid welfare are working.”

“We’ve seen evidence from several states that expanded Medicaid to able-bodied adults in the past that those expansions caused more able-bodied adults to work fewer hours or drop out of the labor force altogether,” Ingram added.

Medicaid coverage comes with no work requirements, and the Obama administration has rejected other states’ requests to impose work requirements on Obamacare expansion enrollees.

In 2013, before Kasich vetoed an Ohio General Assembly ban on Obamacare expansion and expanded Medicaid unilaterally, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper suggesting Medicaid expansion would shrink the labor force.

The NBER paper’s authors found “an immediate increase in job search behavior and a steady rise in both employment and health insurance coverage” in Tennessee when the state removed working-age, able-bodied adults from its Medicaid rolls.

Ingram noted the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has pointed to the NBER paper as evidence the nation’s labor force is likely to shrink with each state that implements the Obamacare expansion.

Since Kasich’s Medicaid expansion took effect in January 2014, a net of more than 20,000 Ohioans have left the labor force. Kasich projected 447,000 would enroll in the expansion by 2020 — that estimate was eclipsed by the end of 2015.

Roughly a third of the Ohioans receiving welfare benefits under Kasich’s Obamacare expansion are men between the ages of 19 and 44. Fewer than 100,000 have dependent children.

Kasich portrays Obamacare expansion as a program for drug addicts, the mentally ill and the working poor. As of October, 398,561 expansion enrollees had received some form of mental health or drug addiction treatment.

ODM spokesman Sam Rossi failed to respond to a series of Watchdog.org requests for comment.

Part 25 of 25 in the series Ohio's Obamacare expansion

1. How many Ohio Medicaid expansion enrollees have jobs?
2. Ohio Medicaid expansion sign-ups keep crushing projections
3. Kasich’s Medicaid expansion has cost taxpayers $7 billion
4. Flashback: Gov. Kasich’s Medicaid expansion end-run
5. Has Ohio Gov. Kasich really restrained Medicaid growth?
6. Ohio Obamacare expansion keeps getting bigger
7. Ohio’s Obamacare expansion has cost taxpayers $5 billion
8. Ohio Medicaid spending is skyrocketing under Gov. Kasich
9. Three-fourths of Ohio Obamacare enrollees are on Medicaid
10. Ohio’s dependence on Medicaid is the worst in the Midwest
11. At $4 billion, Ohio Obamacare expansion blows past projected costs
12. Ohio’s Obamacare expansion already $1 billion over budget
13. Ohio Obamacare expansion costs $3 billion in first 15 months
14. Ohio House Republicans embrace Obamacare expansion
15. Ohio lawmakers show no inclination to stop budget-busting Obamacare expansion
16. Obamacare puts half a million Ohioans on Medicaid
17. No money, no problem for Ohio Obamacare expansion
18. Two-thirds of Ohio’s Obamacare enrollees are on Medicaid
19. Ohio Obamacare expansion 33 percent over budget in first year
20. Ohio budget relies on billions in new Obamacare spending
21. Ohio: Who’s paying for Kasich’s Medicaid expansion?
22. Obamacare adds 450,000 Ohioans to Medicaid rolls
23. Ohio Gov. Kasich wants rubber stamp for Obamacare money
24. Will Ohioans be taken in by Obamacare Medicaid spin?
25. Obamacare expansion passes Ohio governor’s July 2015 projection
See More...

                       

Click here to LEARN HOW TO STEAL OUR STUFF!

 

Jason Hart  is an Ohio-based reporter covering labor issues for Watchdog.org, with a focus on right-to-work, public employee unions and Obamacare. Before joining Watchdog, Jason was communications director for Media Trackers Ohio. His work has been featured at FoxNews.com, Hot Air, The Daily Signal, RedState, Townhall and elsewhere. His investigations into labor union spending and Obamacare's Medicaid expansion have been cited by national commentators including Jim Geraghty, Michelle Malkin, Erick Erickson, Dana Loesch and Mark Levin. Jason can be reached on Twitter at @jasonahart and by email at jhart@watchdog.org