Michael Hiltzik: Medicaid work requirements cost millions, achieve nothing — and may be illegal

This may have been overlooked in the torrent of recent news about the Trump administration's assault on government norms, but its initiative to impose work requirements on Medicaid enrollees has had a tough couple of weeks.

First came a report from the Government Accountability Office dated Oct. 1, finding that administering the work rules costs hundreds of millions of dollars - and that federal officials didn't even think about the potential costs when they started hastily approving the rules as numerous red states requested.

Even more troubling for fans of this questionable innovation was an oral argument on Oct. 12 before a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for