alt Hacker News> When Arkansas added a work requirement to Medicaid, the number of Arkansans with health insurance went down without any increase in employment.
The author is assuming good faith on behalf of the Arkansas state government that the purpose of the requirement was to increase employment, rather than merely cutting down on the number of citizens successfully receiving Medicaid.
The direct reading of your comment is that the intent of the government matters. By what mechanism would it matter? I'm inclined to agree with what you're saying, but it seems incomplete without an accusation of potential levers for producing that outcome.
If I ignore intent, then I would expect the outcome of the additional requirement to be fewer people on health insurance and an increase in employment. (Obviously, both of those metrics are heavily influenced by other factors, so it may just not be possible to measure accurately.)