President Joe Biden is giving states a year to check whether millions of low-income Americans are still eligible to receive health insurance through their government’s Medicaid program. Arkansas is planning to do it in half that time.
about the new rule led to a wave of terminations, despite the fact that 95 percent of an estimated 140,000 affected people should have remained covered.from the Urban Institute, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that 64 percent of adults in Medicaid-enrolled families had heard nothing about the return to the regular renewal process.
“We want to take care of our Arkansans that really need help, but we also understand that we live in a budget neutral state and we have to have a balanced budget, so we have to be smart about our finances,” said Republican state Sen. Missy Irvin, chair of the state Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee. “We want to secure these programs so that they’re sustainable for the people that really really need them.
“CMS has long communicated that states may have a large volume of pending redeterminations. That is why the agency has stressed that states and territories will need a reasonable period of time to complete this work effectively, efficiently, and according to the letter of the law,” a CMS spokesperson said.
The state has also brought on an additional 350 contract caseworkers to handle the increased work, made plans to hand-deliver renewal packets to its most vulnerable Medicaid recipients, and opened a telephone hotline so people can verify and update their contact information. Still, organizations on the ground say it’s not a matter of if but how many people who are still eligible for Medicaid lose their coverage, raising concerns about whether the state will have enough staff to conduct the renewals and is spending enough money on outreach to make sure people are on the lookout for their renewal letters and know they need to respond.
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