Good news -- U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has struck down the Trump regime's decision to grant waivers to states allowing them to impose work requirements for enrollment in Medicaid expansion. Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin was the first to ask for a waiver.
Judge Boasberg says the Trump regime's decision was "arbitrary and capricious" and has remanded the policy back to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reconsider it.
In the court's ruling, which you can read below, Boasberg points out that Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) administrator Seema Verna and former HHS secretary Tom Price circulated a letter last year encouraging states to apply for "fast-track" waivers allowing them to impose new requirements.
Boasberg writes that the Trump regime never actually examined or considered if the waiver would actually help states preserve Medicaid coverage rather than kick people off of it for no substantiated reason.
With this ruling, Bevin will have to decide if he wants to go through with his stated intentions of completely withdrawing from Medicaid expansion.
If he does, he'll have another major fight on his hands; an even bigger one that will draw in the medical services and providers that could literally lose half of their business. There are significant portions of Kentucky where over 75 percent of residents rely on Medicaid.
This case was filed in Washington D.C. under the jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It seems unlikely the Fourth Circuit will grant an appeal right now but anything is possible.