A recent report estimated that the state used an average of 70 days to process typical Medicaid applications, 25 days longer than allowed by federal law. An expansion in the state’s Medicaid took effect in summer 2021.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notified the state that it cannot proceed with plans to require people to work to keep their medical coverage, which would likely result in thousands losing health care.
CMS has told the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services a five-year extension of the Medicaid expansion waiver will not include work/community engagement requirements.
Despite a record surplus, agencies have been told not to expect the extra money in their budgets. Republican legislators want to cut taxes while Democrats support expanded Medicaid and investments in education.
The federal government sent a lot of money to states to help with an anticipated COVID-related economic downturn. Turns out, states did not need that much money – but they may spend it anyway.
The stimulus increases the federal matching rate and offers other incentives to encourage holdout states to expand Medicaid. Most of the holdouts will still take a pass.
State legislatures will have a lot on their plates. They’ll deal with issues in wildly differing ways. We set the context for the 2021 session with an overview of everything from abortion to redistricting.
A technical error in the Medicaid enrollment system may have mispaid 4.9 percent of customers across 27 counties. An audit suggests the numbers could extrapolate to a multi-million dollar glitch for the whole state.
Butler County Job and Family Services have expanded their online services to allow clients to access Medicaid, food and cash assistance remotely. Officials hope that the services are now more accessible.
As Congress considers further financial help for victims of the coronavirus pandemic, the magnitude of the fiscal crisis that governors and their states will have to face is just starting to emerge.
For more than a decade, the feds have been pushing states to modernize their Medicaid management information systems so they could report comparable data. The effort is starting to pay off.
