For Immediate Release: June 2, 2026
Contact: eileen@npagency.com
Washington, D.C.—Following the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' release of an interim final rule implementing Medicaid work requirements under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the following is a statement from Kendra Davenport, President and CEO of Easterseals:
"Yesterday’s rule from CMS on work requirements will reshape Medicaid for millions of Americans, and we want to be clear-eyed about what comes next. We have already seen how this kind of policy plays out when it is implemented without strong protections. In Arkansas in 2018, around 18,000 people lost their Medicaid in just a few months—not because they didn't qualify, but because the paperwork was impossible to navigate. People who were working lost coverage. People with disabilities who were exempt lost coverage. The reporting system itself became the barrier.
At Easterseals, we help people achieve employment every day. Having healthcare makes employment possible, not the other way around. These work requirements are a penalty for losing a job, missing a piece of mail, or a procedural error—they just cause eligible people to lose the coverage they depend on. That means children and adults with disabilities, older adults, veterans, and the family members holding it all together—along with the direct care workers whose jobs exist because Medicaid pays for them.
For more than a century, people with disabilities and their families have trusted Easterseals to show up for them, and we will. We will engage fully in the comment period on this rule and work alongside states to secure the strongest protections the law allows. And we will keep doing what we have always done: standing with every person and every family whose health, independence, and dignity depend on Medicaid.”
