Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation Monday to change work reporting requirements for Healthy Michigan recipients, at the same time urging lawmakers to suspend the requirement entirely if it puts recipients at risk of losing their health care coverage.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-East Lansing, and backed by Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, is an update to legislation approved in 2018 that will require able-bodied recipients of the state’s Healthy Michigan Medicaid program to work or risk losing health care coverage starting in 2020.
Senate Bill 362 extends the time window in which a person can verify they’re meeting their monthly work requirements, moving the deadline for reporting from the 10th of each month to the last day of each month.
Recipients would also have more time to verify compliance with the requirements if they miss the deadline under the legislation, and some recipients would qualify for reporting exemptions if the state can verify compliance another way.
In a signing statement, Whitmer said the bill is an improvement to Michigan’s work requirement law, but warned the requirements are still the “most onerous in the nation” and that other states have had to suspend implementation.
She criticized the legislature for not including $10 million for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services in its planned budget for rolling out the requirements and to inform recipients of the changes, and also said they should enact a provision to automatically suspend the requirements if data shows a significant number of Michigan residents stand to lose their health care.
“To my great regret, it now appears that the legislature is less interested in giving Michiganders the facts and the tools to comply with work requirements than in taking away Michiganders’ health insurance,” Whitmer said in a statement. “As a result, tens of thousands of Michiganders stand to lose needed health care and suffer medical and economic harms that responsible leaders could easily have avoided.”
“I ask the legislature to work with me to prevent this outcome,” she continued.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2020, most able-bodied adults between the ages of 19-61 on the program will have to prove an average of 20 hours of workforce engagement per week, or 80 hours per month.
Exemptions include pregnant mothers, people with disabilities, caretakers of disabled dependents, caretakers of children under age 6 and individuals who have a medical condition that results in a work limitation.
Shirkey spokesperson Amber McCann has said the majority leader wants the program to be helpful for people, and said he supported the legislation as a means to make the process easier for recipients.
More than 270,000 Healthy Michigan enrollees could be required to meet work or workforce engagement requirements to keep their coverage, according to the Associated Press. Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services began notifying those recipients earlier this month.