Governor’s work rule unfair, maybe illegal

The Nov. 15 Democrat-Gazette included the headline “Another 3,800 lose coverage of health care.”

Our governor and his merry men continue to use the so called “work requirement” test to dump the number of poor and disabled Arkansans on the state’s Medicaid roles. So far he has succeeded in “dumping” 12,000 of the state’s neediest citizens in the pose of being a “hard headed” governor looking out for the “resources” of the taxpayer. Never mind that these same citizens in danger of losing Medicaid coverage pay the highest percentage of their income to the state.

One has to ask the question about the fairness of this so-called work rule and even perhaps its legality. In 1986, the United States Congress passed the Patient Dumping and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. It forbade hospitals from refusing “appropriate screening examination” of the patient before them before transferring them to the street or another medical facility.

It seems to me that this rule, in fairness, should also apply to our so-called Medicaid work rules. The state should be required to observe the same rules of this act if only in the interest of presenting evidence of real medical need rather than a “work rule” of doubtful legal basis. In my view the state of Arkansas appears to be guilty of an unfair and possibly illegal practice of “patient dumping,” which is a breach of federal law. TOM CLARK Fayetteville