Four firms were selected as finalists Monday for the contract to research options for replacing Arkansas' private option and improving the rest of the state's Medicaid program.
The Health Reform Legislative Task Force chose The Stephen Group of Manchester, N.H.; Health Management Associates of Lansing, Mich.; Boston-based Public Consulting Group; and Chicago-based Navigant Consulting from the six firms that submitted bids to the Bureau of Legislative Research.
The finalists will give presentations to the task force on Wednesday and Thursday.
The task force is expected on Thursday to recommend the winning bid to the Legislative Council for approval at the council's May 15 meeting.
The consultant "that we choose is going to be critical to us being able to make good decisions and help find us a path forward," Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs and a task force chairman, said.
After the meeting, he said he's looking for a consultant who can recommend "concrete, actionable steps" rather than "fluffy ideas that you can put on a shelf somewhere."
"I'm going to be looking for their ability to tell me how they translate ideas into legislation, into change in policy, into change in programs," Hendren said.
The consultant's report will be due Oct. 1, and the task force will make its recommendations by Dec. 15, Hendren has said.
Among the consultant's duties will be conducting an audit to verify the eligibility of the state's Medicaid recipients, including the more than 200,000 Arkansans enrolled in the private option and those enrolled in the traditional Medicaid program.
Nearly 700,000 Arkansans, including low-income children, the disabled and elderly people, were covered by Medicaid as of Sept. 30, 2014, according to a Human Services Department report.
Under the private option, the state uses federal Medicaid funds to buy coverage for low-income adults on Arkansas' federally run health insurance exchange.
The state created the program in 2013 as a primary way of extending Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level: $16,105 for an individual, for instance, or $32,913 for a family of four.
Citing concerns about cost and objections from some legislators and others, Gov. Asa Hutchinson in January called on the legislature to create the task force and authorize funding for the private option through 2016.
The replacement program would take effect the same year Arkansas is required to begin paying 5 percent of the cost of covering the newly eligible adults.
The state's share of the cost will then rise every year until it reaches 10 percent in 2020.
The consulting firms' responses to the request for proposals by the Bureau of Legislative Research totaled more than 3,000 pages.
The 14 voting task force members in attendance Monday reviewed the responses and a summary by bureau attorney Jill Thayer before submitting ballots ranking the firms from 1 to 6, using the No. 1 for their top choice and 6 for their least preferred candidate.
The contract would run through Dec. 31, 2016, and could be renewed for up to six months after that.
The Stephen Group, which listed its maximum cost for the contract at $1,081,500, received the lowest score, meaning that it ranked the highest.
It was followed by Health Management Associates, which bid $728,770; Public Consulting Group, which bid $2,207,390; and Navigant, which bid $608,750.
Salt Lake City-based Leavitt Partners, which bid $828,037, and Seattle-based Milliman, which bid $475,000, were eliminated.
The Legislative Research Bureau has a budget for professional services of $298,000, although it could pull money from other parts of its $17 million budget to pay for the contract, Thayer said.
Bureau Director Mary Garrity said Department of Human Services officials are researching whether federal Medicaid funds could be used to pay for up to half of the report's cost as an administrative expense.
Metro on 05/05/2015