Newswise — On January 11, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it would allow states to apply for permission to require Medicaid beneficiaries to work or pursue other 'community engagement' activities such as volunteering, education and caregiving.

A University of Michigan team recently published data in JAMA Internal Medicine from detailed survey of more than 4,000 Michigan residents enrolled in the state's expanded Medicaid program. 

It found that nearly half of them already work, and that 11 percent were unable to work. Another 12 percent were students, homemakers or retirees. The remaining 27 percent were not working, but two-thirds of them had a chronic mental or physical health condition, and one quarter of them said this condition interfered with their ability to function on a daily basis. 

A full summary of the findings is available here. 

Lead author Renuka Tipirneni, M.D., M.Sc., a U-M assistant professor of internal medicine, is available to discuss the results and how they might inform the national and state-level discussion about requirements such as those laid out by CMS. 

She is part of a team based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation  that is evaluating Michigan's Medicaid expansion under contract with the state government. For more about that effort, and other U-M research findings related to Medicaid expansion, visit http://ihpi.umich.edu/initiatives/healthy-michigan-plan