ALC - Hospital, Medicaid, - Developmental Disabilities Study Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Senator Jane English
Unverified
0:13
first thing off the bat is we have Cody waits for he's the executive director of the Arkansasorkforce Connections and Eddie Thomas who's the director of the office Employment and Training so we've all talked a lot about recently about the their efforts the department of Workforceervices efforts and have submitted a waiver request to the department of laborbor and we're hopeful that that's going to happen and
so we kind of like to think about so what happens after that if we're lucky enough to get it which
I'm I think most of his feeling pretty 99% sure that it's going to happen we just don't know exactly when but then what what kind of a plan are we looking for afterwards so if gentlemen if you would introduce yourselves for the record sure Cody Waits executive director
Speaker 5
1:04
of workforce Connections department of commerce Eddie Thos department of commercerector of officefice of Employment and training and if you guys would just
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:10
pull your microphones up close to you that would be very helpful thank you
Speaker 8
1:17
go ahead yeah thank you sorry just literally got off a plane from DC meeting with the department of laborbor on some things in in addition to the waiver package but you know just as a recap you know we submitted 9 waivers to the department of laborbor. two of those were kind of governance structure focused with state board function as a local board and state board composition flexibility kind of one that was really focused on strategic initiatives and strategic plans state plans one funding kind of waiver that talks about
flexibility to move funds infrastructure flexibility to operate affiliate centers across the state comprehensive kind of type model and then we're kind of for programmatic waivers that we submitted as well one is kind of like a a last dollar in waiver where right now we have to be the last dollar in to pay for a lot of things we'd like some flexibility around that as well and then some other waivers around youth and things of that nature there there were some questions around the last time and I think we presented and shared some information back to Blr not sure if everybody's gotten that or not but that that was circulated so you know right now from the last
time we were here there's really been no updates as it relates from DL we have had some back and forth and some clarification on some just via email around different you know material things within the waiver package itself and how it was submitted so deal well we'll reach back out to us and we'll have some conversations back and forth with them but again we're supposed to be not ified kind of of the status of our state plan by the end of this month. I think we submitted it on May twentyinth something like that and so they have until august twenty9th to get back to us at which point we'll either find out whether the
waiver package was approved in full whether some of the waivers were approved and some weren't approved and then obviously the the kind of the approval of of the state's first combinederkinsuoa state plan which is something we're very proud of doing so happy to answer any questions and then again you know once the waiver package is either approved it or not we would start to you know you know either start the transition process and start having those conversations and then what comes next so happy to answer any questions. p re s ent ative b ent ley
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
3:18
thank y'all for being here today I appreciate that and I know we saw recently that Louisiana did get some of the words but some denied you know it's just that when you look at what was denied to them does that give you any thoughts that maybe we some of those that might that we requested may not get granted as well or do we have some similar do we have some similar waiver requests that they had that were denied was I guess that was my question we do we have similar waiver
Speaker 15
3:40
requests that are both approved. I'm not exactly sure about the denial list. I don't know if you've looked at their
Speaker 8
3:45
denial list so Eddie can certainly speak to that but you know there's
some other states too that have had some approvals and denials as well. Oklahoma's another one who submitted some similar type waiver packages that had some denials. New Mexico I think submitted some similar type waiver packages and had some denials as well but Louisiana I think is the one that most closely aligns with what we've done and so the state board function as a local board is one that Louisiana got approved that Oklahoma did not when we kind of look at how ours is structured it's similarly more towards what what Louisiana has versus Oklahoma so Eddie do you wanna make any more comments on the stuff I
Speaker 18
4:15
think you're spot on Dictor Waites I think some of the
comparison between our state and Louisiana we make sure that we really kind of spelled out and made it clear the implementation and transition plan that's one of the things that DOL bragged on in terms of Louisiana Oklahoma on the opposite end of that they had a pretty good structure they had a good a pretty good plan but they didn't have the specifics detail within their waiver request and so those are some notes that we received and we did some analysis on other states that were also approved and denied and we think we're more closely aligned with Louisiana. we appreciate the great job you guys
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
4:46
are doing so can you cast us a just a little vision I know
you haven't got approved yet butass it's just a little vision some things that you would like to see that specifically that you know that you know but Eddie cast ail of vision which you'd like
Speaker 18
5:00
to see once these waivers are approved yeah absolutely I think one of the things that we talked about a whole lot within our state plan overall was being able to maximize the public investment dollars that are coming to Arkansas and how we utilize those we also want to reduce administrative complexity within the current structure we know with 10 local workforce enrolment boards and all of the administrative costs and other things that are associated with that we're not
able to invest into direct participant services the way we need to and so above everything we're doing this to make sure that individuals in arkansas are having access to the to the support and resources they need for training and supportive services and so that's the overall thing and then in terms of kind of like policy and overall vision we want to make sure that we're we're busting down for the lack of better words all of the silos and all the fragmented systems that are currently in place and streamlining them into one consolidated state Yeah and then just to add on to
Speaker 8
5:53
that I think if you're you're looking kind of for a timeline of events maybe you know one of the things that we talked about was through the state workforce development board putting together a transition committee so of those board members setting up a committee that would kind of help facilitate the transition as we start to implement kind of the waiver package and and the plan that would that would begin pretty much in September if the waiver package is approved and we get the response in time then you start to talk about you know the state policy revisions so when the state workforce development board assumes roles of the local
workforce development board they have to adopt some certain policies and things of that nature so you're talking about that I think our state board meeting is inoctober scheduled for October so as the transition committee's meeting through September we have some policies and some decisions that have to be made on inoctober and then you have to kind of get trained all the board members have to get trained on some of the new roles that they're gonna assume legislation to follow in the session to clarify some different things in Arkansas state law and then when you start to think about the actual you know functional role that the state board would play as the local board and the
state staff taking over some of those case management responsibilities at a statewide level and local offices we would have to start recruiting and hiring for those positions that we would need and so that's gonna be you know from you know at the end of this month through July of next year so Senatorli
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
7:09
and I yesterday were able to hear some great things that are going on and smackover with regarding lithium some good things that we've got on with our veterans and also some things that I know great things are going over at Newcorpnucorpsteel and those are gone so I'm really excited about the flexibility that we're going
to be able to have as new new things emerge in Arkansas down incamden where things going on with Google and most states got so much going on I'm just really excited about the flexibility that we'll be able to have so I think we can can you assure ouransans that it will allow us to even get more training across the states we see new technologies arri and
Senator Jane English
Unverified
7:43
new things happen across the state and I think that one of
the things that we're looking at which I I love is beginning to look at a bigger system rather than just a number of federal programs that we're looking at as umpresentative Bbentley has
said we've got so many things going on so many opportunities out there we want everybody to be able to take advantage of everything that's out there not just a few people and and not just talking about federal programs so we're we're excited we'll be back with you again we want to know more details all the time so thank you very
much for being here the other thing that's very important to our this whole effort that we have with our
workforce and social program reform that
we really haven't spent much time on is benefit clips 00 I'm sorry I'm sorry
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
8:42
like Denise thank you ma'am chairir. I have a question Mr Was with this waiver or these waivers does any of these waivers address anything dealing with people with disabilities supporting them more in the workforce
Speaker 15
9:01
not directly these waivers are really focused on titles one and three of Wioa workforce innovation Opportunity Act vocational rehabilitation is title o of theorkforce innovation Opportunity Act two separate funding streams, two separate federal agencies you know indirectly possibly but but not directly to the
Speaker 8
9:14
day to day activities of ARs or DSB. thank you thank you madam chair and glad you're doing well. thank
Senator Jane English
Unverified
9:25
you very much gentlemen thank you OK so getting back one of the
things that is really important that we haven't spent much time talking about is benefit cliffs and how does that actually affect our efforts as we're trying to move people to self sufficiency and with all of our federal programs so
today we are fortunate to have on our zoom EricRandolph who's the director of research at the Georgia Center for Opportunity Les Forge the senior fellow for the alliance for Opportunity Heather Webb is the director of
operations and development Arkansas Family alliance and Molly Palmer is the vice president of communications and engagement at the heart of Arkansas United Way. so welcome to you all and I'll just turn it over to you. Do we have them hooked
Speaker 40
10:34
Yes. do you want me to begin? yeah go ahead so I'm glad to see you again senator English and representative bentley it's I was here last in Arkansas last fall and I really like Arkansas. I like the people everybody was friendly at least to me and I really enjoyed it. I'm also a big fan of Douglas MacArthur and he's from Arkansas so that at least it was born and raised in
Arkansas but so thank you for this opportunity. I want to just jump into the here let me share my screen. let me just share my screen real quick can you see my screen OK I want to just jump into it because this is a fairly I guess complex topic and there's a lot of ground to cover so I might just kind of skip over some of the things in the
testimony that was up front and get right to the heart of the issue if that's ok with you that's fine right. OK. and then if I go too fast cause I've been working with this issue since 2011 and I'm really familiar with everything so if I say something too fast or you know something is not quite you know clear to you because I've seen it so many times just let me know and I'll I'll back up a little bit and explain it but basically what I want
to do is I wanna hit you know, just generally what are benefit clips and I want to present it in a way that they're easy to understand what are solutions in general to some general comments then I want to look specifically at Arkansas and then just give you some of a few ideas of what the Arkansas general assembly could do so let's just jump right into it so I'm gonna kind of skip this I'm with the Georgia Center for Opportunity and we're
associated with the alliance for an opportunity so the very first thing I just want to talk to about is just so that people get the understanding that what we're talking about is disincentivizing the people from wanting to earn more money. and and this I think is a pretty good illustration that kind of explains what we're talking about so if if I would say to you like you know would you be
willing to work with me for the next two weekends it might be about 20 hours a weekend of I need your help. I'll pay you $1000 but then you realize that you're gonna lose half of it you know,500 dollars because you either have to pay taxes or perhaps you had some benefits that you would lose you have a reduction in your benefit rates. The question is would you still be willing to help me even though I'm going to pay you
$1000 and if you only get to keep500 dollars that is a50% earnings loss rate. I mean that's what we call it it's you know how much are you losing in your earnings you know, due to taxes or lost benefits if I would if you would actually lose more let's say that you would only get to keep $250 then that would be a75% earnings loss rate and by the way economists call it the
effective marginal tax rate which confuses everybody so we actually are using the easier term to understand earning loss rates or what would happen if they would you were only allowed to keep $100. would you be willing to you know not have me pay you $1000 knowing that you can only keep $100 and then we just stop and reflect on that for a minute you can see how that could be disincentivizing you know, especially if if if the work you have to put in is substantial so
if you're going to put in substantial amount of work you're going to be wondering is it worth my time? right? is it worth my time and it changes from person to person some some people for example they might have a higher tolerance when it comes to losing earnings and others might have a lower tolerance so whether you would still work with me over these two weekends is going to change from person to person now when we
what would happen if you would actually lose more than the earnings and this is what an example of a benefit cliff is so when an earnings loss rate is up is over 100% I mean example would be I pay you the $1000 but you lose to taxes and lost benefits $1500 and so the impact to you is you're actually500 dollars worse off than what you were prior to
agreeing to help me for earning $1000 and this is what a benefit cliff is so it's a disincentivizing a thing that happens with safety net programs and and it's it's also part of the disincentivizing scheme if you think it will so when you have a high earnings loss rate even before you get to the bennetford cliff a number of people will already be disincentivized so you're not
going to necessarily find people running right up to that cliff you're going to find a lot of people holding back sooner so you might see for example individuals that say I'm not going to you know work overtime or if they're only working part time I'm not going to seek full time employment or they're offered a promotion they might say you know ok that comes with more responsibility but I'm going to lose so much of my additional earnings or I don't
want to risk it running into a benefit cliff that they will decline so this is kind of explaining the overall phenomena of benefit cliffs we developed a a scale a policy guide more or less a scale that kind of describes or you know the severity of earning loss rates and so what I just want to point out basically is what you want it from a policy standpoint you definitely want to avoid the
benefit cliffs 100% or more. I mean that's obvious but you also want to avoid the extreme earning loss rates what we describe as75% or more and you want to really if at all possible not have any in that high category. you don't want to be any over50% so that's kind of the goal and we're going to see this when I actually give you some examples of how in in Arkansas we're up over75% in some of the cases there's another factor that
that is an important thing to understand and that's that these earning loss rates are additive so so for example if you have more programs or taxes and programs you actually added up and then you get some sort of total which is the total impact so for example if you lose 15% due to income and payroll taxes and then you then you lose let's say30% from benefits and I just want to
point out that that's the statutory benefit reduction rate for the snap program it's30% that means that that what what the amount lost your earnings rate is now45%. and they add up so we throw in another program or a couple more programs you can very easily now be above50%, above75% and what the chart is showing you on the right of this slide is that this is this is kind of like
theoretically let's say we have uh5 programs you know5 programs that each program smoothly tapers the benefits away to zero there's no problems with each program individually there's no benefit cliffs but because of this additive function we call it like stacking effect because you're basically stacking one program on top of another program and then ultimately what happens and what you can see
graphically is that you could have a situation where you actually have you know not only a benefit cliff but you actually have a large income range of disincentivizing returns in other words as they continue to earn more money they continue to lose even more and we find this we don't find this as much in Arkansas but when we were looking at the data nationally there's certainly states that this is much more common
so when we want to talk about a solutions the one thing that we do at at where I'm at you know George Center of Opportunities we want to make sure that they're meaningful and there are a lot of organizations out there today that have proposed various solutions but much of them if I may humbly say may not be as meaningful so the very first like just if I just come up with like four basic points the one point is that
Speaker 42
20:29
the solution must be real and it must be scalable so sometimes they might have a solution but they're going to apply it to a small segment of the population maybe they will come up with an idea that you know we will take you know several 100 people on a particular programs and we're going to increase their benefits so that they don't experience a benefit cliff but you want to make it scalable so it doesn't just impact a few people so it impacts everybody you know everybody that receives it
should that it should be designed in such a way that that it's you know you don't you don't treat people by favor you want to treat everybody the same that the next point is some of these like for example just simply shifts the impact. So so maybe we we make a change and it's helping a group of people and it's in a certain income range but what they really did is they didn't really solve the underlying problem and they're just shifting the problem to
Speaker 40
21:32
another population group or to another income group so that's one thing that we want to avoid and so to really solve it you really have to kind of do the dirty work if you will you have to kind of look at what are the underlying causes and what are the critical factors and what do we need to do to actually fix it as opposed to come up with a band-aid approach. and the last point is really important to us you want the solution to be fiscally responsible
if if we say that well why don't we just spend more money and everybody that has a you know you know has the experiences a benefit cliff or you know high earnings loss rate let's just let's just spend more money and give them more money to help them bridge
Speaker 42
22:19
over and some states have made this approach that's not scalable that's you know if we would if we would actually take that idea and we would scale it it would be costly and Missouri is a state that's an example of
this where there was legislation introduced that they came up with a way to basically fund more to help people that encounter this but they have not implemented it's been passed for several years now because the cost is is too high so they try to scale it in fact the fiscal note said that to the members of their legislature in Missouri it just in the beginning they said we can't afford this but they passed it anyway so that's let's kind of
Speaker 40
23:03
jump and take a look at what does it
look like in Arkansas So I probably just need to explain the chart for a minute so and this is one of the things where I might go too fast because'm I'm used to seeing this stuff all the time. so this is a basic chart where it's it's it's actually believe it or not it's a column chart but the increments are so they're they're they're they're tight together and there's over 200 intervals that it looks like an a chart but these are actually
column charts and so so when you when you look at like the gray this is your net earnings so so what we take is what what is somebody earning and then we're going to subtract
Speaker 42
23:48
their payroll taxes so that's your socialcurity, Medicare payroll tax and then we're going to subtract your state income tax and your federal income tax and what you have left is the net income is your net earnings there is one difference though that
Speaker 40
24:04
we did for this there are some safety net
programs in the tax system. like for example the refundable tax credit is a safety a safety net program because it's it's refundable and what it allows to happen is that it allows the family to actually receive a credit above what they actually paid and in some cases they may not have paid
Speaker 42
24:30
anything almost half of the population or half of working adults in in America pay no income tax to the federal system
Speaker 40
24:44
they they they either have no tax liability at the end or they receive actually a credit a refundable tax credit and the two major ones
Speaker 42
24:51
are the earned income taxx credit and there's also the additional child tax credit which is the refundable portion of the child tax credit and then and then so so then we just kind of add that and this this yellow is actually cash assistance it's a very small percentage this is actually just made up of t an n iff and lie heap and then
we have then we have the food assistance and the food assistance is made up of your snap it's made up if you're you're wick nutritional program and then there's also school lunches that makes up the the green and then we have the medical assistance now split into two so this is the medic the medicaid and the chip. Now this program like if we just kind of stop I mean medicating chip I'm sorry medicaid and ship and then and
then we have the these are this would be the Arkansas ins healthalsurance exchange so this would be the health insurance exchanges and what they would receive with the premium tax credit so this is what we call the
Speaker 40
26:02
basic program. so this is a basic benefits package it's almost exclusively entitlements like like you you aren entitled to get that refundable tax credit you're entitled to get Medicaid you're entitled to get
snap so these are programs that everybody that if you fall within the income eligibility you're gonna get it and if we just kind of put this together what you see is they're actually 8 benefit
Speaker 42
26:29
cliffs going up this range of income so we're going like from earnings of zero up to 100,000 and and I have them identified on the chart so you
Speaker 40
26:39
could see it there's actually a taf a tanniff cliff. there's a snap
medicaidickliheap reduced price lunches and chips. These are actual benefit clips over this range for this would be in this case it's a single mom with with a with a little girl and a little boy and so you could see that the disincentivizing thing. the other thing that's not shown on this and I'll give you a graph a little bit later you see how flat this is right here before you get to the snap. there's a range here from like 2450 to32,000 where you're in the
extreme high earnings loss rate area and this is disincentivizing so if you're actually up here well before that snap clip there's really not much incentive for them to even pursue a higher paying job or you
Speaker 42
27:33
know trying to work more overtime to get more so this is this is a a a real disincentivizing zone even before you get to the benefit clip and that's what I mentioned earlier so the next the next slide is what would happen if we add
childcare and and we don't consider or subsidized childcare and we don't consider it part of the it's not considered part of the basic benefits package because not everybody receives it and this program is there's not enough funding for the most part and states have either priority lists or waiting lists and some so even if they might qualify eligibility they're not necessarily going to get it but if they do get it what you get is you get a tremendous cliff.
it's the largest of all the benefit cliffs is is with the childcare and and you actually get another you get another cliff as a surprise
Speaker 40
28:32
it's a stacking effect clip. there's no specific program that went away that causes that cliff. It is because of that other slide I showed you where there's a stacking effect it's just because of all the earning loss rates and how they added
Speaker 42
28:48
up that you actually get another cliff and
and what we did was like like well let's see let me just what was saying the the one thing that we're doing this is just kind of like a prep for another slide that's coming. so what we wanted to do was we wanted to take a range of this and figure out you know what what percentage of this income range is how much of it is these extremely high earning loss rates how much of it is high can we just kind of like simplify this right? So when when I'm
Speaker 40
29:25
looking at this right like this right here you know how can I simplify that so
Speaker 42
29:29
we can kind of explain it and so what we do is we don't do like I mean you could go like from0 to a million dollars and it's not going to be meaningful so we needed an upper range and what we did was we kind of picked one that we thought made sense is when does that family actually make a net contribution to income taxes. so what we do is we look at how much are they paying in income taxes and we subtract how much they're
receiving in safety net benefits and that amount. So for this for this particular family here for the single mom with these two kids it's not until she earns $85,000 until that occurs Everything that she might earn below $85,000 she's still going to be receiving more in benefits than what she's paying in income taxes and it's not going to be to this point so this just hold like a hold this thought in mind and we'll we'll see it again in in two slides. so this is what it looks like
when we add a section 8 housing and there's no new benefit cliffs this is not true for all states and like point out but in the case of Arkansas for this example it does not actually create a new cliff but what it does do and we'll see this the very next slide it actually makes the earnings loss rate's worse and so this is the last slide so this explains I just explained the $85,000 which is the upper
Speaker 40
30:58
limit so we're now looking at how severe if we go from0 dollars in earning up to
Speaker 42
31:06
$85,000 what percentage of that range has for example an extremely high earnings loss rate. you could see that's 28% more than 25% of that range is actually now what we call an extremely high earnings loss rate and and just as bad I mean not as bad
Speaker 40
31:29
almost as bad where we had nearly 26% is in the high range and then worse we have5% are the benefit clip. so when you add that all up nearly60% of that income range we go back here and we look at this income range
Speaker 42
31:46
from zero to you know we was it 85% 60 % that range is is in the earnings loss rates where we don't really want it from a
public policy standpoint you're having either high or extreme or a benefit cliff. so so that could be very disincentivizing clearly to to individuals if we actually I
Speaker 40
32:12
think I'd put this in the written testimony if we would actually say well let's not start at0 let's start at
Speaker 42
32:19
right around 18,000 because that's you know this lower range let's start at something that's a little bit more reasonable. it it increases
it to over75% in that range is is now this problematic area. I I want to mention one thing. let me just I'm going to jump back a couple of slides this tann of cliff as a researcher I'm not that concerned about it because generally for you to be in this area you're probably working part time and
Speaker 40
32:52
there's not and and if you look at the slopes around it you know they you know they're up
sloping so there's a great incentive for them to easily overcome this benefit cliff. so
Speaker 42
33:07
so I do not see the benefit cliffs due toan have to be problematic all the others I see them as problematic. so each one of the other ones I see is problematic and then obviously the child care is problematic and in Arkansas the housing is is problematic because it it
it it's the stacking effect and it just makes the earning
Speaker 40
33:35
loss rates worse. so that kind of summarizes what the situation is in Arkansas and here's just a few ideas and I understand thatless Ford who I work with is going to be testifying
Speaker 42
33:48
and she has actually more ideas on this but the one idea is like well let me just say that that as a state legislature you have block grants such as childcare
such as lie heap that you have the opportunity that you can make you have a lot of flexibility in in changing the makeup of those programs but in addition there's also a number of you know waivers federal waivers and I know that you're familiar with that you just had testimony about federal waivers that you can apply for that can change that can change you know different programs and they're demonstration projects so for Snap there is a section 2026 demonstration project and
it specifically says in the federal law that includes welfare reform you could use that waiver for example to address benefit cliffs in medicaid I'm gonna give you two there's like for medicaid in Indiana they have a health savings account and a bridge account and that's an idea that the legislature might want to look at but more broadly there's actually a section 1332 waiver
with the Affordable Care Act that will that gives states a lot of flexibility the states can actually capture the the premium tax credits from the federal government to use in health insurance reform and so so in the testimony I give in the written testimony I give some ideas of how you could do it and my suggestion is that it's going to take a restructuring of health insurance it's going to
it's going to be based on what what did they call risk equalization. the only really place we find that today in in America is with the medicare advantage program. they're private insurance you have competition it doesn ' t undermine innovation and it addresses some some some of the more perplexing problems in health insurance industry and and then the last one I'll leave
you with is the subsidized childcare strategy we actually came up with three things we think states should do one is a regulatory review to identify where they can reduce the cost. The problem with childcare is it's just so expensive and you we saw that in the chart it's such an expensive benefit that that it's almost impossible to solve the benefit cliffs so we think that there needs to be a regulatory review to address its
cost. The other thing is that for whatever reason almost all states have been promotingentercare which is the most expensive s setting if if the emphasis would change to actually promote home and relative care settings which by the way is what one of the goals of the TAF program it would actually go a long way to addressing the benefit clips in the childcare and it becomes more reasonable to solve
it and the last piece is that the federal statute actually asks states to use public private partnerships and very few states have done that there's actually one in Michigan that they've done that has been successful we have a paper on that and in the back of the back of the testimony I actually provide some links to some studies that we have done that will explain this in greater detail so this is just a quick
hit of of that and so that kind of ends my testimony and of course I'm open for questions or comments or anything
Senator Jane English
Unverified
37:53
that you would like thank you very much this was very very informative. appreciated ladies. do you all have something would you like to come to the table and do you have something to
Senator Jane English
Unverified
38:11
I just wonder if you can come up to the table and you can be part of the conversation I think uhless Ford has a a presentation she's going to make but I didn't want to leave you all out since you were honest we we're glad to have you here OKles we're ready
Speaker 56
38:29
for you thank you thank you senator thank youpresentatives
Speaker 57
38:33
it's very nice to speak to you today. I am going to share my slides as well let me see if I can
make sure I share the right thing real quick. Is everyone able to see that? all right. I'm gonna start with my goal today is to briefly discuss what benefit cliffs are the ones to watch out for and then I'm really gonna try to zero in on options that are available cause I know that that'll be important as we go through here. So first what is the benefitslip? I think Eric covered it very well. it's
when someone who's on benefit programs when they receive a raised promotion or more hours they experience an abrupt loss of government benefits or just a a stalemate an earnings loss ratio that's so high that they really don't see the incentive to work more or receive a raise and this is important especially in Arkansas because of the percentage of the population that depends on Medicaid that depends onsnap that depends on the benefits that Eric mentioned. Now the number s here are your pandemic highs so they are significantly smaller since the unwinding
since the snap Abod waiver has been expanded to more ages but you still have a significant percentage of your population who depends on Medicaid Snap and other benefits and so we'll be in disincentivized from pursuing work opportunities. and just to look a little bit about the math Eric went into it in detail but if you're not going to see net resources increase whether you're making $11,000 a year or65,000 dollars a year that's
the example in DC or you see an abrupt benefit loss of something like $25,000 in childcare subsidies if you receive a $1000 raise in Illinois that is a heavy disincentive from seeking work, seeking more hours, seeking raises so I'm just gonna briefly focus on two of the programs that I mentioned above why it occurs and snap food assistance supplemental nutrition assistance programme. it was designed to gra phase out
gradually that was the original design so for every additional dollar in earn income you were receive you would you're supposed to lose about30 cents of that dollar of the snap benefit however because of increased deductions because of the increase benefit on the front end you phase out of the snap eligibility abruptly and so it doesn't really matter if you extend
eligibility you're still going to have that income limit. and the same is roughly true in Medicaid but it's not an it's not a it's not a benefit like snapwear OK if I'm a single mom with two kids I roughly have600 dollars and monthly snap benefits. Medicaid is just an incontin benefit where I get health insurance and if I go past certain eligibility thresholds certain income thresholds I no longer have access to that benefit and so that can be a more dramatic
benefit loss to individuals even if I'm going into theffordable Care Act health coverage and have've included some of those here I do want to highlight that because so many of our safety net programs by my estimate there's at least 114 different means tested programs for long income individuals because they operate in silos it makes this this benefitfit cliff loss worse where if an individual is receiving food assistance and
healthcare assistance and energy assistance and childcare assistance in Arkansas often those programs aren't talking to each other and so they go through their reporting their eligibility checks on different schedules and they will they the individual the family who's in need is not able to accurately predict when they're going to hit a benefit cliff. they don't know oh if I receive $1000 here I lose my child care there they are just afraid and so that fear the siloing can produce a fear the lack of knowledge, the lack
of ability to budget can produce a fear that also inhibits them
Speaker 63
43:03
from seeking raises. Now I'd like to again I'm going a
Speaker 57
43:07
little bit quickly cause I know I know folks are coming behind me. So I'm gonna focus on a couple paths forward that Arkansas can really focus on. The first is pathe immediate reforms within the federal structure within state authority that you can pursue program by program the second path beat it's a more comprehensive reform
of trying to model what should our safety net look like and you can do this for a small part of your population through ri pilots many folks know that there are about 122 guaranteed income pilots across the country and they're essentially testing out can we just throw money on top of the current safety net. This is a different path. This says what if we tried on a state level to replace the entire safety net with what we think it should look like. what if the benefits what if you never hit a benefit
cliff? What if you never hit an earning loss ratio more than50%. Could we model what that would look like and you as you return to work for a small powder power population so I would call that a rise pilot but let's go into program by program some options available for you and I've shared this this slide deck with the committee member, the subcommittee member so I'm happy to discuss them more in detail cause I'll be going through them quickly here. first in the food assistant's main food assistance program supplemental nutrition
assistance programme SA you can submit a demonstration waiver you can try to move from a30% reduction to a 24% per dollar earned reduction and if you're adjusting a benefit USDA US food and nutrition services they can approve a waiver for up to 15% of your population and so you could test this out on a small scale doesn't make a difference compared to our control group if we smooth the benefit clip
for up to 15% of the population. you can also set a reasonable asset limit Arkansas has set a reasonable asset limit for your elderly and disabled folks through your broadbased categorical eligibility option. it's about I believe it's5500 dollars I would I would have to go back and check but that you it yeah or you the rest of your population you have the standard federal asset limit in child care as Eric highlighted child care is
normally one of the largest benefit cliffs that working families experience when their subsidies go away and it's because of how Eric highlighted most states focus on daycare centers they don'tfoc they use survey work that focuses on the highest cost daycare centers and so and how they phase out the subsidy is in is not a gradual phase out.
So first state'sent set their childcare subsidies. so you have a lot of authority to phase down the subsidy gradually. you have the authority to assess income continuously or as continuously as possible. Both of those will make a huge difference in how you face the subsidy down. second because most states including Arkansas focus on a voucher that is given directly to daycare centers instead of a benefit that is given to the family. Most families even if they would
prefer a homebas or familybas childcare provider can't choose that option. You can move into a cash benefit distribution system where you program it and monitor it to ensure that it only goes towards care and that allows you to fit choose the lower subsidy and face it off ums more smoothly. Finally inanath you can replace various disregards with one phase out and here's most
important a lot of tanf dollars aren't actually given it straight cash assistance a lot of the state's tannniwalk rant including Arkansas is used to is given to providers who are intended to provide case management or intended to provide employment and training. you can pay for outcomes. you can say all right here's the base tanfflock grant but you only get some percentage of what we intended to give you this grant that we intended to give you if you achieve the employment and earnings outcomes
that we have set as a legislature in order to help people jump the cliff because again the point here is not continued assistance it is work it is employment it is flourishing and independence. there are some targeted medicaid fixes that I'd also like to talk through here and you can pursue these through an 11:15 waiver which is the medicaid one or the 1332 waiver or comba which is the Affordable Care Act marketplace waiver or you can combine them
first you can expand employer sponsored and premium assistance The ideal is that someone receives in health insurance in the private market and the private market right now is employer health and employer sponsored insurance so you have the ability if someone is working at Walmart in Arkansas to go to Walmart and say hey we can use our medicaid funds to pay the employee portion of their health insurance costs that is dramatically lower to the state it in some cases we've seen
it60% lower in costs than you are currently paying in Medicaid so that's first. second you can create things like HsAs savings accounts while they're on the medicaid program so that when they bridge to the ACA they have a savings account that enables them to meet their deductible that they will experience once they go to the ACA. finally it's really important to address marriage penalties here as well. When we ass marriage penalties is a type of
benefit cliff if we treat households where two unmarried partners are treated as separate households even though the state they share the same resident but we treat married couples as one household when they share the same residence we are creating marriage penalties that don't need to exist if two unmarried partners share residence we should assess them as though they were they are married. except in very limited circumstances where that's not the case. OK, I'd like to
briefly chat throughlan B which is where you really focus on leading this nation and how we should reform the 114 different siloed programs and you start small here this is we have to prove a concept before we roll it up on a federal a state or national level. so you can start with 1000 households you can start with a three year pilot you can use tan of dollars to fund it you can measure it against randomized controlled trial standards so we're measuring this control group, treatment
group and essentially you can try to roll7 programs into a single benefit. have the programs listed here and you can ensure that you phase down that benefit so that benefit loss plus tax in taxes space is no more than a50% earnings loss ratio and the goal is what should a safety net that focuses on opportunity that focus on work that focuses on independence what would that
look like? it's not what we have no one would have built this. Finally I'd like to end by saying Arkansas has an incredible foundation there were 100 families initiative restore hopepe the 1033 initiative it really focuses on the the building blocks of what we know independence it's it's work it's family it's community it's those are incredibly important to healing what led a family into crisis
and that is so important to immediately address. So just in the next steps here you can start with modeling Arkansasc specific Benefit lift data using our data county by county you can authorize a small scale ri pilot in order to say here's what we think the safe net should look like and you can direct your department of humanman Services to apply for medicaid and snap waivers to address both marriage penalties and benefit
Speaker 59
51:48
thanks so much for listening to me today. I will stop sharing now please let me know if you have
Senator Jane English
Unverified
51:56
any questions. thank you so very much that very very informative so let me just go to our two ladies here. would you like to introduce yourselves and and do you have some comments you'd like
Heather Webb
Unverified
52:07
to make. Sure, absolutely. thank you guys for having us today so my name is Heather Webb I am a partner with Restore Hope 100 familiesmilies and I work for Arkansas Family alliance so I
have worked with families in poverty or facing the Alice derivative of our population for the last eight years so I absolutely love what Les said and I agree with everything that she did mention she would be much more formally trained and have all of the research so I appreciate that greatly but I I can share a lot as far as what families that are actually facing here in Arkansas that we get to see on a daily basis but I also want to let her
introduce herself because I have a feeling we're going to talk
Speaker 75
52:56
about the same things and I know it's late in the day so we'll do a little bit similar yes hi everyone thanks for having me here today I'm Molly Palmer. I am a part of the heart of Arkansas United Way and similarly I think have just a couple of additional data points. I really appreciate I feel like I've learned a lot here today already but have a couple of additional things to to share with you all about sort of not only the family experience but also the employer experience and the experience of
the nonprofit community that steps up to serve where those benefits cliffs leave families in crisis. so we'll let you absolutely. So
Heather Webb
Unverified
53:31
I kind of just wanted to talk about the reality of the situation. So I wanted to share about a family that I actually was talking to today I did have a PowerPoint but I'm just gonna kind of go around it actually cause they hit on a lot of the pinpoints so we'll just go around it but you guys should have a copy of it if you want to so I have a mom that was four years ago she was homeless
and she was on disability she did have a drug addiction but today she is stably housed in her own home and she is now making50,000 dollars a year which sounds wonderful but two years ago she was making36,000 dollars a year. She was still able to access her Medicaid benefits whereas today she cannot I just talked to her this morning she also just lost her300 dollars a month subsidy
towards her mortgage. So today she's working4550 hours a week stressed to the max and does not know how she's gonna make up this300 dollars that she just lost. that is the truth about the benefits clipped and so I thought I would just bring it back to a real story of a lady that I talked to today since we have touched so much on the statistics behind it you know poverty is like $15,000 for a single person can you imagine trying to live on $15,000?
I don't think any of us could manage that so when you're talking about a family of3 or4 what do you think reasonable amount of income would be. Well standard medium income is just over 71,000 but to be above the federal poverty line it's just over $27,000. so that's why this benefits lift is so important to us that work with these families because we see it and we feel it on a daily
basis. So I noticed your notes so I won't go over too much more of yours because I had a
Speaker 77
55:36
lot of that so I'm gonna let her go now. sure so I I would say if you know me at all you know I'd be remiss if I did not mention the
Speaker 75
55:45
allice data and heather spoke to that just a little bit so a lot of you are familiar with that but ouralice population here in Arkansas is first asset Limited so when there's a crisis, there's nothing to fall back on and there's nothing to help these folks to build wealth and to move forward. They are income
constrained which means based on a bare bones basic cost of living they're not able to meet that budget at the end of the month. I heard someone say recently they have more month than money and I think importantly this population is employed and often we find that our allice population is working two or three jobs to make ends meet. So Heather referred to this a little bit that the for a family of four in Arkansas on average and and we calculate that allice data down to the county level so we can get very specific or look
really at any of your districts if you're interested in that as well. but on average for a family of four in 2024, the cost of living was71,000 dollars. The federal poverty line for a family of 4 was31,000 dollars. so that means the cost of living in Arkansas is 227% of the federal poverty line. so we're talking about even these benefits where that create these cliffs the eligibility is in the neighborhood of 130% of the federal poverty line are 185% of
the federal poverty line. so there is a gap that already exists of people who are ineligible for these benefits and still not able to make ends meet. So if we exacerbate that by by not making some of the changes I think that have been suggested here today. it creates a further problem for our economy. we have the privilege of running a program called Alice at Work which helps work directly with employers to consider what can they do for their employees and
I'll tell you that that's part of a national movement and on the national level we are talking about how do you bring in coaches into employers to help them understand work with their employees to understand what is a raise going to mean for you and your family. so we bring that individualle coaching but I think it's important to say that here in Arkansas the participants who have been a part of the companies and businesses who've been a part of this program Alice at workk have said our number one problem is
recruitment and retention. So we've talked a lot about the incentive of an individual to work but when those individuals are disincentivized it affects the business community as well it affects what businesses can produce and what they can accomplish and so there's a real economic impact to things like this. just yesterday I was visiting with a local partner who is an administrator for some federal grant funding community services block grant fundingy he
funding etc. and one of the things that we were talking about was her pursuit of private dollars to meet the needs of families who are just in exactly this situation that that families walk into their office and they face an immediate cliff which is we can't help you today and we can't help you today because you don't qualify for this program because you may earn $1000 too much a year in order to be able to do that and so there is there is we're seeing
an increased reliance on private philanthropy in order to meet these needs but in a time when I think we are all feeling like gas costs more money we have less disposable income to give and so the nonprofit community always I'm proud to be a part of this community always stands ready to do as much as possible to help but it is also true that there's a difference between what a benefit can provide and what private dollars can provide. my friends in the hunger relief world would want
me to say for every one meal that the charitable Food Network provides, Snap provides 9. so when we lose that snap benefit it's not just losing one lunch or one dinner for a family. it's multiples exponential numbers of meals that are being lost when they lose that. so appreciate the opportunity to be here with you guys today and welcome any questions. thank you
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:00:02
very much so do we have some thoughts some questions Representative Bentley
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:00:11
thank you chairman. uhless thank you for being here today. So with Indiana's model, can you kind of go a little more details for us on that because really that's the first time I've heard about that the bridge. so can you kind of tell us a little bit more what what that would look like for a bridge for that individual
Speaker 57
1:00:29
on to do in a health savings account yeah I think Eric brought this up but Indiana has something called the healthalthy Indiana plan and it they have 1.0 and a 2.0 version and essentially what they did is
they set up a health savings account for individuals while they're on the medicaid program so that when they move over the benefit cliff for a single individual they would lose medicaid about 138% of the federal poverty level and it depends for their children which they receive health insurance through the CIP program. every state has a different eligibility threshold for that but it allows the parent or the single individual while they're on medicaid to receive additional funds in a health
savings account and then the healthal savings account can be used to pay their deductible costs once they move into the Affordable Care Act and so if you combine a health savings account with something like premium assistance and that's not widely used but most states I think3tysomething states have some version of premium assistance but the issue is it's not widely used so if you partner with someone like Walmart in Arkansas andark and many individuals are are employed at Walmart who are
also on Medicaid.stead of paying the total cost of their health insurance. while they're on Medicaid you would say no you can go on employer sponsored insurance so that even when you receive raises at Walmart when you work more hours there you don't lose your health insurance and also it's cheaper to the state you're just covering the employee portion of what they would have to cover like we we all have some employee portion of health insurance so those are two options health savings account and using Medicaid for our premium assistance but I'll I'll let
Speaker 50
1:02:13
Eric jump in on the Indiana HIP. I actually have a graphic I can share with you if that would be ok
Speaker 39
1:02:24
I can just share my screen that might help
Speaker 83
1:02:29
this is actually in can you see it yet yet we can
Speaker 42
1:02:32
now we can yeah right so this is actually in a report that came out I think last year and it's one of the references in the back of my testimony so this explains the Indiana programme so you have basically
thedicaid enrollee and then you have the state program and what they actually do is they split it between health savings account managers insurers so they get like a normal commercial insurance deductible deductible health plan and in addition they get the health savings account and then that's how they kind of have their medicaid program set up it's the only one in the country that was approved this way and then what they do is they upon exit they allow them
to keep a portion of the health savings account that they had saved while they were on Medicaid that they can use to help with out of pocket you know a cough with their medi medical insurance after they leave so I thought that this you know graphic might be helpful for understanding it can you give us so talk about the
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
1:03:34
marriage penalties a little bit more like we're talking about so what what specifically do we have in Arkansas for marriage penalties that you were talking about or so how can we fix
Speaker 42
1:03:51
so we do have like with the childcare program Arkansas is one of the39 states that never counts a partner in a household of a parent never counts that income. so if you're a married couple you count both the incomes to you know to qualify for the for the childcare but if they happen to be unmarried and there's someone identified as the parent and then there's a
partner living with the parent Arkansas never counts it they're actually I believe6 states5 states that are actually always count the partner and and and and that creates the disparity between the two so so the one the one thing that I would definitely look at is you know how do you define and this is actually I wrote a paper on this with the institute for Family
Studies last year but the one the one of the things you could do is as you administer these programme look at how you define the household and who's in the household and and ask the question are you treating unmarried couples differently and just go program by program in some cases you won't be able to change it because the federal statute but in the case of the childcare programme that's a block grant and you have and you have the ability to change that there are also other more complicated things that that could be done with marriage
penalties and actually Les and I are involved in writing something up on that that's
Speaker 86
1:05:30
not yet ready it when it is ready we appreciate
Speaker 37
1:05:37
think the the thing with the tanf I in my memory when they when we
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:05:43
implemented Tanf the idea was to have marriage and people living together and all that so sometimes some of these things just kind of go against whatever it was that we
thought we were designing in the same
kinds of things are not happening so let me see Senator
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
1:06:08
and and thank you ladies and Eric for the testimony today it's it's a very real issue so if we're talking about making some of these major changes that have been recommended some of the some of my colleagues are going to want to
see more proof in the numbers and so my question is around you know the very the the the benfits cliffs are very real. cuts coming from the federal programs are very real and so can you can you share some data and this may be more for Eric or or less but can you share some data on on savings with some of these on the backside because right now we talked about today the benefits cliff
and we didn't hear anything about you know the the the actual overall cost the benefits are not being taken away if we've if we make some of these recommended changes for those that are trying to work their way up but but how do we ultimately save money at the federal level or or more specifically in Arkansas at the state level if we make some of these changes Yeah I'm happy to jump
Speaker 57
1:07:23
in here with the general thesis which is
program by program one of the goals is that you don't want benefits to be so generous that you're not able to phase them out continuously before income limits. So one of the iss I can use snap as an example. Snap was intended to phase out before the the net income limit. What we did was we added so many deductions that we didn't start phasing it out soon enough. and we also in the middle of COVID we increased how many benefits you were getting so you
it was also still a sharp clip. so the goal is never to increase safety net benefits in order to solve this problem. The goal is to carefully assess each program and how they stack on one another so that with each additional dollar the individual is better at each additional earned dollar the individual's better off so we're not advocating for more a more generous safety net. We actually have a very generous safety net it's
Speaker 39
1:08:30
goal is to design it better follow up
Speaker 42
1:08:36
can I'm sorry I can add to that if if I could so we've actually done some modeling it's actually very difficult modeling some I I used to be on the appropriations committee did fiscal notes all the time but this is one of those this is one of those very difficult kind of calculations but as a general rule when you submit waivers for the federal government you have to prove you
know cost neutrality. so so everything that we're doing is is going through that process of not causing additional costs and and the one thing that that is very hard to model is that we're we're kind of trying to hit the behavior because because you want you want to encourage the behavior of people to move up economically you know mobility and and when that happens you're going to reduce costs you don't you know right now what's kind of happening is
you have the overall disincentive and so so people settle in some point where they are somewhat satisfied of way you know of where they are and and so they they're no longer striving to earn more money. and and that's that's the the really bad part of these disincentives is that your you're you're changing you know their expectations, their hopes that's that's kind
of what you're hitting at these different people they they can come to a point and realize like why should I try harder right because because of the situation they're going but if you actually kind of me changed the system in a way that that no longer is happening it's gonna change some of the underlying assumptions that you use in economic models and that's a very difficult thing to model because it's very dynamic and and so what we've been kind of cautious in what we're doing and what we represent so
we we don't want to introduce something that's going to cost any more money and lesson is very much knows that that you know the work that she's doing everything that that we look at it's like you know let's not cost so so even with what we you know even those kind of step by step kind of things we're doing each one of the steps is done in a way that we're not going to cause that but I think in the long run the dynamic side of the of the modeling is gonna you know we're we're gonna see some major
changes. if I could if I could just make one comment to senator English's she said that about the about the tanf program and then it seems like that some of these things
Speaker 96
1:11:12
are counteracting the the tanna program. my response is absolutely that's absolutely true. got another
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
1:11:24
question just to follow up so so what we're talking about more or less assumes that the the federal funding and and the current
funding levels are static and and not being decreased and that's what concerns me and I think concerns some of my colleagues is that that may not be the case and so what I what I what I'm looking for is you know, in some of those graphs that you had you you you had somebody that was working their way up and at some point they exit that picture completely and that's where we ultimately want to get everybody and and that's what I'm looking for in terms of of how do we
move more people out of that graph faster, and and what does that look like because at the end of the day, you know what's to keep them from moving from that you know struggle down here, and and no incentive to oh life's comfortable right here exactly where I'm at and they never move on beyond that. that that's a very real concern.
Speaker 42
1:12:34
I you know I agree exactly what you're saying. I think when you address it program by program so so like if we if if Arkansas does look for example at private public partnerships and it's it's in Michigan where they did a really good experiment on that and they're continuing to do the program now as well the you know if you could like solve that one problem it's like let's solve the the childcare pro problem and then we can set that
aside right and then we had some fairly good ideas of what to do with the with the food stamp program for example. Well let's solve that one and then we could set it aside and then if we can actually go into the like the the medicaid problem is really a a problem of once you've come off of medicaid you're gonna have out of pocket costs and and people are just afraid of losing that you know just just knowing that if you're on medicaid your costs
are covered and now if you transition off medicaid and you either have employer insurance and the percentage that you have to pay or even if you go onto the market there's out of pocket expenses so if you address that you know we can we can move that off of it and if you kind of approach it that way I think that we can get there. I think you know let's let's let's deal with childcare. let's solve that one. let's deal with the medical assistance we can solve that one and then if we remove
those two I think it's a much easier task that's set before us Representative Bec
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:14:18
thank you I thought there was someone in front of me who caught me off guard my question is this and you guys have got me my head swimming with numbers trying trying to figure this thing out I I hear in this is not critical of
anybody but I hear we gotta go at this program by program I like that concept you breaking breaking the the problem down and go but then also you showed us some data that says you know it's really the stackable part of this thing that that creates the cliffs which would say ok forget program by program we gotta look at the stackable and how how this is affecting it's almost like you have to look at it from an an individual's
you know this person's situation would would make them more susceptible to stacking problems with it's cliff problems related to stacking so with all that said it it it it looks like if you're I was trying to say ok let's break it down what are we looking for program by program and now you guys can crack are we looking at increasing the efficiencies that might I I
think I heard something to that so that the programs are more efficient there's their savings related for that our our and I'm just gonna say this
are are we looking for a fraud within those programs that you know individuals that are maybe either shouldn't be in
that program or or are you so that's the program by program look the other one which I I really liked was the idea of going with the employers and and helping
pay the the the individual's portion of the medic helping to save on medicare I thought that was a good good
point so that's what I'm looking at there u would that be sort of correct or or in my way
Speaker 39
1:16:27
out of yeah I know lessa's gonna have she's gonna have comments on this too yeah I think
Speaker 42
1:16:33
we're just struggling with is is is legit. I mean because it's so complex the system I mean we there's actually over 80
programs over 80 programs and then when we've modeled it we modeled the the major programs that we mail ot about 15 programs which is the ones that are most prevalent and then used and we we actually we we actually co-authored a a part on fixing fixing benefit clips and part of that is you know get Congress to consolidate programs. Yeah I mean was it do we have 8 or 9 food food related programs why why do we have
eight or n you know why don't we have one right and and so one of the great things that could happen is just simply consolidating the programs do you make it less complex that the more programs and each program has their own rules and they're you know what they test and things and so I think there's a lot of start somewhere right we we have to there's somewhere we have to start and I think you have to start program a program and then if you can consolidate we push for the consolidation you let
that happen and coordinate and and the one door program that that Arkansas is pursuing I think' a great administrative structure to help in this effort and I think there was another comment that you said in there that I wanted
Speaker 96
1:17:56
to to say something and it's kind of slipping my mind it was one other thing I was going to say to to your point I forget what it is ramble a bit but my my was is
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:18:15
related to you know the the the stacking type issues in the eclips related strictly to stacking is that
Speaker 57
1:18:23
right and I can jump in there because the stacking normally occurs and I think this is a good focus point. The stacking normally occurs for young families. so single mom to kids, young families when that's when they have to rely on multiple benefits so they need health insurance for their kids or medicaid. they need extra help getting food on the table there
on staff they they're trying to go to work so they're getting childcare oops the heating went out of their house so they're on something called blackie. When we see those multiple benefits and I'm not even including half the list that Eric looks at. it's really for young families who are the most vulnerable. It's you know the those are the ones who we want to focus on so I think by saying stocking we're focusing on the most vulnerable households but again back toric's point we can only under a state authority we don't have most of these programs are federally
authorized. We can do tweaks program by program that decrease that stacking effect but we gotta go we have to go in some sort of order here. so we go with I I think it is program by program and
Speaker 42
1:19:33
by doing that we're helping the most vulnerable I remember now cause you hadn mentioned about about fraud so there's you know fraud waste and abuse type of things and that's also a concern but I think today what we're talking about this is the the this this problem that we presented is because of the
eligibility rules that are in place assuming everybody follows the rules so so you know we yes you have to address you know the the fraud waste and abuse that are in systems and and you need the program integrity side of it as well but what we were addressing today is today is simply this is a problem with the rules themselves they're uncoordinated you know part of the pilots is to kind of get some coordination among the rules so that they fit together and make
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:20:23
sense as opposed to the situation we have now no ther question so and maybe this is not a question but it's a statement I I'm looking at some of your charts and I'm trying to I'm trying to do that math thing right I'm like how do you get from here to here as you move up a chart you know and it looks like there's gotta be dollars reduced and you know of course the the efficiency aspect of
that and and maybe using local employers helping them with the I can see where all that's that's dollars that could probably help flatten this thing out a little bit but it just seems to me like it's almost it it just could address how how do you I
mean if you look just you you just take a category and you go up and you say ok this group's gonna lose as I as I go
up in employment and that's that's just the way it works it's like so I I don't I don't know how you mathematically write that other than
Speaker 42
1:21:25
pulling something out of the system the one if I can share my slide again cause maybe it might be helpful to answer that question if I may. so can you see it yet so this is the one this is the one graph that we talked about and I don't know if I have the ability to draw a line but but if if you actually consult like like if we could this doesn't
have the childcare if we if we solve that problem with a private public partnership and it's off the table and then we do some reform with the medical assistance and and I have like a more permanent solution and also the indiana model this is now off the table and then what we're looking at is we're looking at just the green down here and if you just focus on that I think you could see that it is probably possible that we could slope this in a way that you get rid of it because if you handle these kind
of drop offs in here you could just do that so I think it's it makes it more manageable. I mean when we when we look at this is I mean this is like there's no way right? You you look at this graph and you're thinking this is a basic program plus childcare there's no way of fixing this and and in a in a sense it's true but then if you start breaking it out and we we solve the childcare we solved the medical systems and we're only dealing with the green, yellow and blue here. I think that we'll find that there could be a solution that's kind of
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:22:59
what we're we're headed toward. I don't know if that helps or not go ahead yes and this is just a request looking at the data as you were speaking actually I I agree with exactly what you what you said but is there any data out there that says that in terms of cliffs which categories are creating most of the major cliffs in in terms of as
a percentage of cliffs that an individual might see because that might help also to tell us to take a look at this area this to see if we can do some work in that area it might focus us in is a better word to where we need to
Speaker 39
1:23:44
be focused into yes there is and and and I would just say I would say that it's that the childcare the the medical assistance
Speaker 42
1:23:52
and the food and and those are the three that you we should be concentrating on. and less might have a little
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
1:24:00
different take on it and No same here so do you do you have data that's related to
Speaker 102
1:24:14
Arkansas or is it more generic we we have both and you would share that
Speaker 42
1:24:20
you will share that with us yeah so actually maybe we could do this a little bit offline because what our modeling does is it it's a fairly complex and we can we can basically you tell me
the family structure you know how many kids their ages etc and we can run the numbers so it's like like we could just run various kind of scenarios and look at the numbers and exactly what it is that's how the data will be it's a computer program right it's a it's computer model ing where where we basically are replicating what happens if you go into one of the county offices and you apply for benefits and then the various benefits you would get for example from the federal government and so we can replicate that and we can show
you over a range of income what it is so so based on that we can actually do that we actually did a really large report for the state of North Carolina that kind of really broke things out so so maybe we could have a conversation about there's you know exactly what is the scope of the work and how much you want to see and that sort of thing and we could definitely generate the data thank you very much that may
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:25:28
be something that we need to do is is come up with
that kind of a report I guess one of the things that senator Petty was talking about we're all trying to think about how we move people forward and one of the things that I just found out or realized last month was we're working really hard at the state level trying to make sure our kids have a future when they graduate from high school so that they're employed and listed or enrolled someplace well one of the things that I realized is that that young person who gets a job
and maybe that job pays him40,000 dollars a year because he's a welder or whatever that changes the whole family income structure and I thought what are we trying to do we put people in a box that and we don't give them a way to get out but that's exactly what we want is those young people to be able to go off and have a a future and yet what we're doing is we're penalizing them for for their efforts or the family for the efforts unless the kid moves off and in
part of the family anymore but you know there's so many of these things that I think are have been built in by Congress as they wrote the rules that they just aren't aren't realistic and they're you know and they they don't make it an easy for a program to operate we just spend a lot of money and ladies I thank you but do you have any of oh do we have one more
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:27:02
I'm sorry Representative thank you my question comes in with the
public private partnership. and you mentioned if I heard it right that if you have someone working at walmart that they would come in and pay part of their medicaid like a Is that what you said is that they would come in and pay a federal government program they would pay that part rather than the person so it's it's
Speaker 57
1:27:34
actually kind of opposite so say I work at
Walmart and Walmart generally offers employer sponsored insurance to its employees but those beneath 138% of the federal poverty level or whatever the cutoff threshold is forIP. they are generally on Medicaid. they generally don't take employer sponsored insurance. However, Arkansas can create an option. so say there's an employer sponsored insurance available via Walmart. there's usually a an employee portion it's you know a
couple $100 a month and instead of Arkansas spending federal and state dollars on the medicaid program. they would instead pay the employee portion of the the EI the employer inpot andors insurance so that as that individual takes on more hours, gains wages that raises hourly raises they stay on Walmart's employer sponsored insurance and slowly
the medica the Arkansas subsidy disappears but they keep their insurance the
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
1:28:50
entire time. OK. so it doesn't come out of the
Speaker 57
1:28:55
the Walmart's pocket No. I mean it Walmart will be in paying their employer side of the insurance which they pay for every
Speaker 60
1:29:03
Walmart employee. thank you thank you very much
Senator Jane English
Unverified
1:29:08
and ladies we appreciate you being here and we enjoyed your comments and
they are very relevant and less and brought we appreciate both of you being here and giving our presentation it's been very good and thank you very much and have
Speaker 124
1:29:27
a wonderful weekend thank you we are you know
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Presentation on Consolidation of Local Workforce Development Boards into One State Workforce Development Board [Exhibit B]
C. Overview of Benefit Cliffs and Their Implications
D. Discussion of Recommendations by Subcommittee
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Senator Jane English
Unverified
Speaker 5
Speaker 8
Representative Mary Bentley
Unverified
Speaker 15
Speaker 18
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 40
Speaker 42
Speaker 28
Speaker 56
Speaker 57
Speaker 63
Speaker 59
Heather Webb
Unverified
Speaker 75
Speaker 77
Speaker 50
Speaker 39
Speaker 83
Speaker 86
Speaker 87
Speaker 37
Speaker 88
Senator Jim Petty
Unverified
Speaker 60
Speaker 96
Representative Rick Beck
Unverified
Speaker 102
Representative Cindy Crawford
Unverified
Speaker 124