Marianna provides an early reality check on how hard it is to carry out President Trump’s vision of a social safety net that requires most able-bodied people to work — or try to work — when few jobs are to be found.
Mike Rogers spins doughnuts in an empty lot next to a shuttered grain operation in Marianna, Ark., another sign of the depressed local economy that makes it hard for Arkansas Works’ recipients to find jobs. By Amy Goldstein Amy Goldstein Reporter covering health-care policy and other social policy issues Email Bio Follow March 26 at 10:03 PM Marianna, ARK.
The view from this Delta town is that confusion about the program is rampant, and people scoff at the idea that jobs are waiting for those willing to work. Both Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar suggest that the program is helping people become more independent, contending that most of the people who lost benefits have found steady work. But the state lacks data so far to back that up.
From the program’s start last June through last week, more than 11,000 people on Arkansas Works, as the expanded Medicaid program is known, got new jobs, according to state figures. But the state does not know whether these jobs went to people cycling in and out of work — common in poor, job-scarce areas— or whether the requirements motivated them to find work. Nor is there data showing whether these new jobs come with better wages or health benefits.
She called the listed phone number and faxed information to a state employee in Pine Bluff. She was told that, like many people, she was exempt from the work requirements — in her case, because she was caring for her 20-year-old daughter recovering from a car accident and her 3-year-old granddaughter.
“I won’t go” to the doctor, she said, having just finally paid off — in $10 monthly installments — a hospital bill for the X-rays she needed for a torn tendon before she got onto Medicaid. Of Arkansas’ 75 counties, Lee ranks 73rd in life quality, according to the national County Health Rankings project. Computers are so scarce that even the public library has a sign out front saying it does “not offer the Internet” — a problem for the work requirement’s first several months, when people could not yet phone in their monthly reports.
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