Editorial: New Hampshire squandered precious resources enforcing Medicaid work requirement

The Sununu administration spent — some would say squandered — $187,000 attempting to bring an estimated 17,000 participants in the state’s expanded Medicaid program into compliance with a new work requirement that has since been blocked by a federal judge, the Concord Monitor reports.

That included almost $109,000 paid to a contractor to call Medicaid recipients; about $42,000 devoted to a door-to-door effort in some inner-city neighborhoods; more than $23,000 spent sending out letters to all Medicaid participants; $12,000 for informational materials; and $1,000 for overtime.

This aggressive effort reached a total of about 800 (!) people who got assistance in complying with the new requirement. That left about 16,200 recipients in danger of losing their health insurance by failing to document their compliance.

The state should be thanking its lucky stars that this outreach program ceased with the judge’s ruling, and it should be hoping hard that its appeal of that ruling fails. By our calculation it cost almost $234 to assist each of those 800 participants; at that rate, it would have cost nearly $3.8 million to help the rest. That money could be and should be spent, as intended, on providing health insurance coverage for the working poor.

Read more: https://www.vnews.com/Editorial-N-H-squandered-precious-resources-on-Medicaid-work-requirement-28846943
(West Lebanon Valley News)