Giving Compass' Take:

• Audrey M. Provenzano explains how work requirements for Medicaid that would increase the burden on poor individuals who are already struggling to pay bills and get the medical care they need. 

• How can philanthropy work to change policies that overburden the poor with paperwork and requirements? How can the existing process be streamlined to improve access and care?

• Burdensome requirements aren't the only inefficiency in public health. Learn how Medicare encourages over-diagnosis, to the detriment of patients. 

More states are joining Kentucky in trying to impose work requirements for people who receive Medicaid.

I have seen how quickly disease or injury can punish the body, and how completely an addiction can take hold and alter the course of a life. And I have seen how patients struggle not only to make ends meet, but to get the medical care they need.

Almost 1 in 5 able-bodied adult Medicaid beneficiaries are unable to work outside the home because they are primary caregivers for family members or are attending school. A small portion of the remaining able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries do not work - and in the majority of cases research shows that they simply cannot find a job.

Precisely how officials will distinguish between these groups – those deemed “deserving” of health care and those deemed “undeserving” – is not clear.

It is clear to me that the primary goal of these work requirements is to further unravel the safety net for the poor and drive eligible individuals off of Medicaid, regardless of the effect on their welfare. The work requirement policies offer no job training to facilitate unemployed individuals a reasonable path to work, and no other state aside from Massachusetts have enacted policies requiring private companies to offer health insurance to their lower-income employees who rely on Medicaid. More than anything, for me, it is a return to the pointless and repugnant distinction we Americans continually parse: distinguishing between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

Read the full article on work requirements for Medicaid by Audrey M. Provenzano at The Conversation.