Arkansas’ Department of Human Services will soft launch a new Work and Community Engagement requirement for certain Medicaid enrollees on July 1. The requirements are being implemented across the U.S. in January 2027 as part of President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill passed last summer.
Under the program, most enrollees in the state's Medicaid expansion program, called ARHOME, aged 19 to 64, must spend at least 80 hours each month at work, school, or volunteering in order to keep their health insurance. State DHS officials are hosting a series of town halls to answer questions about the process.
DHS Director of County Operations Mary Franklin told attendees in Little Rock Friday that Arkansas will start asking people to report their eligibility six months before the federal change goes into effect.
“It’s to ensure coverage doesn’t get interrupted. We want to reduce the risk of uncompensated care and we want to educate our enrollees so they are better prepared to meet these requirements when they go into effect.”
Some beneficiaries may be exempt from reporting their hours. The exemptions include people who are pregnant or 60 days postpartum, disabled veterans, parents with dependent children aged 13 or younger, and people participating in substance use treatment programs.
Franklin added the changes will impact existing beneficiaries and new applicants alike.
“They will need to be able to demonstrate that they have been engaged in the community by meeting one of those allowed — one or more, a combination, of those allowed activities for 80 hours a month, or that they were exempt. They’ll also need to demonstrate that every six months.”
Arkansas tried to implement work reporting requirements for Medicaid in 2018, becoming the first state in the U.S. to do so. Over 18,000 Arkansans lost their health coverage as a result.
Franklin said this time the state is using more methods to verify recipients are meeting requirements, including sharing data about employment or earnings across state agencies and using a third-party vendor to contact enrollees DHS is struggling to reach.
“Our first step at the renewal is going to be to see what we can do ex parte, without the client having to do anything,” Franklin said.
“If we need information from the client, just like we do now, we will send them a prepopulated renewal form — prepopulated meaning it’ll be filled in with things we know about the client now — and with the additional request for what we may need for community engagement requirement verification.”
Dustin Etheredge is a health insurance advisor serving clients enrolled in ARHOME. He voiced concern about the website used to renew and apply for the program.
“A lot of these folks are working on very small screen devices, and I’ve yet to see a single DHS software that worked well on a small-screen device,” Etheredge said.
“So we might want to have the engineers working on making them more sensitive and more functional on small screens so that clients can finish the process.”
DHS will start implementing the work requirements on July 1, but will not remove people from coverage until the requirements go into full effect on January 1, 2027. More town halls are scheduled in Jonesboro, Fort Smith, Crossett, and Hope in May and June.
More information is available at ar.gov/engage.
