Strict Medicaid work rules could harm people with serious illnesses, advocates say : NPR

The nearly 400-page interim final rule released Monday makes that process even harder. For months, federal officials have been meeting with states informally and giving them guidance, and states understood that people with conditions where continuous health insurance coverage was really important would be exempt. 

"What the rule says, as published, is that that's actually not enough," McIntyre explains. "The condition or the disease needs to be actively interfering with your ability to work. So people with early stage cancer who are in radiation treatment but still have the capacity to work, or people who have HIV but can still technically work, are not exempted from the work requirement." 

 McIntyre and others foresee situations where a person newly diagnosed with cancer, who is working, loses Medicaid because they don't fill out the paperwork correctly. That could lead to patients losing coverage when they need it most…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5845097/medicaid-work-requirements-cuts-hiv-cancer