State reduces Medicaid rolls 10,124 in May

Database cross-checks flag those who move, DHS says

More than 10,100 people were removed from Arkansas' Medicaid program last month as a result of an effort to identify recipients who are receiving benefits in more than one state, Arkansas officials said Thursday.

Thanks in part to those removals, the number of people covered under the state's expanded Medicaid program fell by almost 5,000, to 316,603, as of May 31, according to figures released Thursday by the state Department of Human Services.

J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said that clearing out a backlog of overdue applications and other paperwork has allowed the state to increase its efforts to ensure Medicaid funds aren't paying for benefits for those who aren't eligible.

Those efforts have helped shrink the number of people covered under Arkansas Works by 17,510 since Jan. 30.

"A priority of the governor is to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars," he said.

According to a letter, dated Thursday, from department Director Cindy Gillespie to Hutchinson, the removals last month resulted from a federal database check on 700,000 of the state's Arkansas Medicaid recipients.

The query found 26,696 who were listed as having received benefits in another state, Gillespie said.

The department has been sending letters to the addresses it had on file for those recipients requesting verification of their place of residence, Gillespie said.

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At the end of May, the department terminated coverage for 10,124 recipients who hadn't responded or who said they no longer live in Arkansas, Gillespie said.

That included 8,156 who had been enrolled in Arkansas Works, as the expanded part of the state's Medicaid program is known, and 1,968 recipients of the traditional Medicaid program, she said.

The department is still checking the residency of 12,291 others flagged in the database query, Gillespie said in the letter.

Coverage will be terminated for those who don't respond to the department's letters or who no longer live in Arkansas, she said.

The department has routinely used the federal database to check the records of some Medicaid recipients but had not been able to use it to check the records of others, including those on Arkansas Works, because of difficulties encountered in installing a new eligibility verification and enrollment system, Gillespie said.

The initial poor functioning of the system, which first went into operation in 2013, created a backlog of applications and other paperwork.

Improvements to the enrollment system and a "surge" of temporary caseworkers helped the department clear out the backlog late last year.

Gillespie added in the letter that coverage for an additional 7,736 Arkansas Works recipients was terminated at the end of May because other types of correspondence sent to their addresses was returned.

"As you know, public assistance beneficiaries are required by law to provide DHS updated addresses within 10 days of the change so that we can communicate with them about their cases and ensure that they remain Arkansas residents," Gillespie said in the letter.

Hutchinson hopes to further trim enrollment in Arkansas Works by limiting eligibility to adults with incomes of up to the poverty level, instead of the current 138 percent of the poverty level, which state officials say would result in about 60,000 people being moved off the program.

Hutchinson also hopes to impose a work requirement on those who remain in the program.

The state plans to submit a request to the federal government later this month for approval of those changes, which would take effect Jan. 1.

According to the figures released Thursday, those who were enrolled in Arkansas Works as of May 31 included 293,434 covered under the so-called private option, which uses Medicaid funds to pay for recipients' coverage in plans offered on the state's health insurance exchange.

The other 23,169 Arkansas Works recipients were assigned to the traditional, fee-for-service Medicaid program because they were considered "medically frail," meaning they need services that private plans typically don't cover.

An additional 655,000 people were enrolled in the traditional Medicaid program as of April 30. This group includes poor people who are elderly or disabled, children from low income families, and parents with incomes of up to 17 percent of the poverty level.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act calls for the federal government to pay 95 percent of the cost of coverage for Arkansas Works this year.

The state's share will then increase each year until it reaches 10 percent in 2020.

Under the terms of a federal waiver, the state will also owe additional money if the cost of the private coverage from 2017-2021 exceeds an amount that will be calculated based on monthly, per-person cost caps.

Figures released by the Human Services Department show the program's monthly, per enrollee cost remains below this year's cap of $570.50.

In May the average monthly cost of coverage for private option enrollees fell by $2.05 per person, to $526.88.

For the first five months of the year, the monthly cost has averaged $531.39 per person.

Metro on 06/23/2017

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