President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” may affect when some older individuals retire, due to its new work requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The law introduced Medicaid work requirements for certain individuals up to age 64. States have until Jan. 1, 2027, to adopt the new requirements. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also raised the work requirement ages for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, to include individuals 55 to 64. States are now implementing those SNAP requirements, although specific timelines vary.
Some applicants may be exempt from those requirements, so long as they can prove they qualify.
Yet as the law is implemented, experts say some older workers may need to delay retirement to access benefits. Those affected may include people who need health coverage and have not yet reached Medicare’s general eligibility age of 65, for example, or who need food assistance.
High-income older individuals tend to have good health, the ability to work longer and increased longevity, according to Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank. However, data shows the opposite is true for lower-income older workers, he said.
“A substantial portion of the people taking early retirement are doing so because they basically are having a hard time staying in the workforce,” Smalligan said.
“Now we’ve created this situation where basically … until they reach 65, they’re not getting food assistance support,” he said.
Likewise, including older individuals in the Medicaid work requirements weakens the health insurance safety net, he said.
The changes come amid broader consumer struggles around affordability, and as a historic number of Americans reach retirement age.
Medicaid and SNAP changes help fund tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for consumers and businesses. In 2025, the law may reduce individual taxes by $129 billion, the Tax Foundation estimates.
The legislation reduces Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, with $325 billion of that coming from the new work requirements.
CBO projects that changes to SNAP under the law will result in $186.7 billion in savings by 2034, with 37% of that coming from amended work requirements.
Yet those savings strategies are expected to throw millions of Americans off those programs, including older Americans.
How new Medicaid cuts may affect older workers
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Prior to Trump’s legislation, federal law prohibited work requirements for Medicaid, though some states had moved to implement their own rules, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy, research, polling and news organization.
The newly enacted work requirements will apply to 43 states, KFF found. The terms of the legislation largely apply to states enrolled in the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion.
Under the law, individuals ages 19 to 64 must work or participate in qualifying activities for at least 80 hours per month to be eligible for Medicaid. However, certain individuals — such as those with qualifying health conditions or parents of children age 13 or younger — may be exempt from those requirements.
About 5.3 million more people may be uninsured due to those changes, according to CBO estimates.
Because the work requirements do not apply to people 65 and over, this will affect people who choose to retire before that age, said Alice Burns, associate director of KFF’s program on Medicaid and the uninsured.
Among 50- to 64-year-old Medicaid enrollees, about 11% have retired already, Burns said.
“What we’re really expecting here is that they’re going to come from retirement and go back to work to meet these work requirements if they want to keep their Medicaid coverage,” she said.
About a quarter, 24%, of 50- to 64-year-old individuals currently on Medicaid are not meeting work requirements because of illness, disability or caregiving and may merit an exemption, Burns said. But it’s still unclear what they will need to do to successfully qualify, she said.
Those individuals will face administrative requirements, such as providing documentation of certain health conditions, according to Burns: “It’s not clear how hard that’s going to be to report.”
In Arkansas, efforts to implement Medicaid work requirements in 2018 to 2019 failed in large part because of the administrative requirements to demonstrate compliance, said Gideon Lukens, senior fellow and director of research and data analysis at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.
While 95% of Arkansas Medicaid enrollees subject to the requirements complied by working or obtaining exemptions, 1 in 4 still lost coverage, Lukens said.
That’s despite Arkansas using data to automatically exempt a large portion of qualifying individuals from having to report their status, he said.
“The vast majority of people they could not automatically exempt did not take the steps necessary to fulfill the paperwork requirements,” Lukens said.
What new SNAP rules may mean for older Americans
A shopper at a grocery store in Brooklyn on Dec. 12, 2025.
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Now that the “big beautiful bill” has become law, SNAP work requirements will now apply to Americans up to age 64 who qualify as able-bodied and who do not live with dependent children.
Under the requirements, individuals are limited to three months of SNAP benefits every three years unless they work at least 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption, such as those with certain medical conditions or those with children younger than 14.
The SNAP changes in the law may prompt 2.4 million people in a typical month to lose coverage, according to CBO estimates.
The new requirements may pose a challenge for older workers who don’t qualify for an exemption due to a physical condition, but who may still face challenges when working, particularly in low-wage jobs that may require more physical exertion, said Ed Bolen, director of SNAP state strategies at the CBPP.
Older individuals may be less comfortable using tools to upload documents through a phone or computer, Bolen said. There also may be emotional hurdles to overcome if they don’t feel that they should be asking for assistance, he said.
“There’s some additional complications that might result in folks just giving up or feeling like they don’t deserve SNAP,” Bolen said.
How Congress may change the policies
It will largely be up to states to phase in the new Medicaid and SNAP changes.
However, the federal government could also make further changes, said the Urban Institute’s Smalligan.
“Major legislation oftentimes has a corrections bill that comes a year or two afterwards,” he said.
As the impact of the new Medicaid and SNAP work requirements on older individuals becomes more apparent, “there is an ability to step back and say, this was a mistake,” Smalligan said.
— This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The NIHCM Foundation.
