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Trump Administration Delays Medicaid Work Requirements Enforcement
Confirmed
In Short: The Trump administration has delayed the enforcement of Medicaid work requirements for six months, allowing states more time to prepare.
Donald Trump (Wikidata P18).
Medicaid work rules: enforcement delayed to July 2027, administration tells states. The Tomorrow Desk
The Trump administration announced Friday that it will delay the enforcement of Medicaid work requirements for six months, ensuring Americans won’t be dropped from the program over the new rules until at least July.
States have been racing to prepare their Medicaid systems by January 1 to include the work requirements passed last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
The legislation required states that expanded Medicaid after Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act to ensure all working-age recipients without dependent children are employed, in school, or volunteering at least 80 hours each month, unless they are disabled, caring for young children, or “medically frail.”
The delay is optional, and states that want to move forward and begin disenrolling people who don’t meet the requirement and don’t qualify for an exception may still do so.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, Mehmet Oz, has been under pressure from states and Democratic lawmakers to grant a delay.
The work requirements are among the most controversial provisions of the sweeping domestic policy and tax law President Donald Trump signed into law last year.
The Trump administration will allow states to delay enforcement of new rules requiring low-income adults to work in order to receive Medicaid coverage.
In the letter, Dan Brillman, who oversees Medicaid at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, acknowledged the significant burden states faced in building out new, expensive software systems to track the employment of enrollees.
The delay gives extra preparation time to states that are “70% to 80% ready” to undergo the new verifications.
Background
Four Democratic state attorneys general, including Minnesota's Keith Ellison, filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Oregon challenging the federal government's plan to enact work requirements for Medicaid beginning in 2027.
What's confirmed
- The Trump administration announced Friday that it will delay the enforcement of Medicaid work requirements for six months, ensuring Americans won’t be dropped from the program over the new rules until at least July.
- States have been racing to prepare their Medicaid systems by January 1 to include the work requirements passed last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
- The delay is optional, and states that want to move forward and begin disenrolling people who don’t meet the requirement and don’t qualify for an exception may still do so.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, Mehmet Oz, has been under pressure from states and Democratic lawmakers to grant a delay.
- The work requirements are among the most controversial provisions of the sweeping domestic policy and tax law President Donald Trump signed into law last year.
- The Trump administration will allow states to delay enforcement of new rules requiring low-income adults to work in order to receive Medicaid coverage.
- In the letter, Dan Brillman, who oversees Medicaid at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, acknowledged the significant burden states faced in building out new, expensive software systems to track the employment of enrollees.
- The delay gives extra preparation time to states that are “70% to 80% ready” to undergo the new verifications.
What's still developing
- Around 5 million fewer people are expected to be on the program a decade from now because of the work requirements, and most of those people are expected to be uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
- And last month a federal judge threw a hitch into the administration’s approach on a highly contentious question: How can chronically ill Americans get excused from working and still maintain their Medicaid?
- District Court Judge Richard Stearns said, in spelling out how people must show they’re too medically frail to work.
- States have said they weren’t given enough time to set up the verification systems needed to police the new requirements.
- The announcement, which followed a recent loss in court over a key element of the work requirement, represents a major setback for a long-sought Republican reform.