Over 5 Million People Could Lose Medicaid Coverage If Requirements Change – Newsweek

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Suzanne Blake is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on consumer and social trends, spanning from retail to restaurants and beyond. She is a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and joined Newsweek in 2023. You can get in touch with Suzanne by emailing s.blake@newsweek.com. Languages: English

Suzanne Blake

Reporter, Consumer & Social Trends

More than 5 million Americans are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage if Congress enacts work requirements in 2026, according to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Newsweek reached out to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) for comment via email.

Why It Matters

More than 80 million people in the United States rely on Medicaid for health care coverage in America, but many of these recipients could be booted from the program if Congress adopts nationwide work requirements.

Many states have expanded coverage in recent years, and the new work requirements would likely cause millions to go without health insurance.

What To Know

The majority of those who would lose Medicaid coverage would be removed from the program due to confusion over the new reporting requirements, the report found, not because they actually aren’t employed.

Of Medicaid beneficiaries, 9 in 10 work, are looking for a job or meet other exemption criteria like attending school or having a disability.

Adopting Medicaid work requirements has been one solution proposed by Republicans as they work to lower government spending. President Donald Trump created the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, to cut federal spending, and Medicaid has been one of the top programs analysts expect to get cut.

The new House-approved budget also calls for $880 billion in spending cuts to the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid. Work requirements could be one way to reduce the funding needed for the program.

However, Trump has promised Medicaid and Medicare, which serves elderly Americans, would remain untouched.

What People Are Saying

Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in a statement: “Work requirements are a blunt tool that creates costly administrative red tape and separates eligible people from health coverage they rightfully qualify for.”

Chris Fong, a Medicare specialist and the CEO of Smile Insurance Group, told Newsweek: “The work requirement for Medicaid, which has been utilized in some states such as Texas is a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand, it encourages people who are on Medicaid to work towards getting out of a financial situation that qualifies them for Medicaid and other social services. But the reporting requirement can feel overly burdensome where some people may not be able to keep up with, and therefore lose their very needed healthcare for themselves and their family.”

Kevin Thompson, a finance expert and the founder and CEO of 9i Capital Group, told Newsweek: “For Medicaid, there will be a definite cost savings in the program — because people are going to fall off. If we look back at the previous Trump administration and use Arkansas as an example, the people who lost coverage weren’t necessarily ineligible. They were people who did qualify, but were dropped because they didn’t report work status or did not document exemption eligibility. That’s the trap.”

Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek: “Working requirements for federal benefit programs are nothing new, and the ones proposed for Medicaid may sound more than acceptable to many Americans. However, it’s important to note the majority of individuals on Medicaid are already working. While working requirements aren’t always bad in theory, they can cause headaches and a lot of additional paperwork for recipients. The hope is any requirement introduced has clear language involving its implementation and doesn’t produce many extra hoops for potential recipients to jump through just in order to receive care.”

What Happens Next?

Fong said it is likely that instituting a federal work requirement for Medicaid would reduce the amount of money spent through the Medicaid system because of lower enrollment numbers. However, the requirement could make it too challenging for people who really need Medicaid to qualify and stay enrolled.

“We already saw challenges in continuing enrollment for qualified individuals when the Covid time Medicaid protection from disenrollment expired,” he said, adding that more than 25 million people were disenrolled after coronavirus protections expired last year.

“Many of these individuals still qualified for Medicaid, but were disenrolled due to procedural otherwise known as paperwork issues,” Fong said.

If millions do lose coverage, they’d likely face medical debt or live with untreated conditions.

“All because of administrative requirements that were intentionally designed to force people out of the system,” Thompson said.

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