arkansas medicaid expansion

 

Asa Hutchinson and Republican lawmakers on Monday proposed overhauling Arkansas' Medicaid expansion to encourage recipients to work after the state's work requirement was halted by the courts and President Joe Biden's administration. So the work requirement has remained suspended. The letter notes that “the low level of reporting is a strong warning signal that the current process may not be structured in a way that provides individuals an opportunity to succeed, with high stakes for beneficiaries who fail.” MACPAC has called for a pause in disenrollments until adjustments are made “to promote awareness, reporting, and compliance.”. Arkansas’ work requirement had been approved in 2018 by former President Donald Trump’s administration, and thousands had lost coverage because of the requirement before it was halted. Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion program was initially called the Arkansas Health Care Independence Program, but transitioned to Arkansas Works as of 2017. March 23, 2021. By mid-2020, enrollment in Arkansas Works had grown to 277,284. The state’s total Medicaid enrollment (including the newly eligible population as well as people who were already eligible under the previous guidelines) grew by 70 percent from the end of 2013 to December 2016, reaching 948,181. But as of January 1, 2017, enrolled in expanded Medicaid dropped to 310,951, following the state’s efforts to remove people from Medicaid who were no longer eligible from the program. A. Lawmakers considered an extension of Medicaid expansion during a special legislative session in April 2016, prior to the regularly-scheduled session. The current number is higher than usual because the Covid-19 pandemic caused many people to lose their jobs or businesses. And by December 2016, there were 331,000 people enrolled in the state’s expanded Medicaid. By September 30, 2016, total enrollment in expanded Medicaid in Arkansas had reached 324,000 (about 7 percent of them were “medically frail” and are covered by the state’s traditional fee-for-service Medicaid rather than the Private Option). But Federal Judge James Boasberg overturned the Medicaid work requirements in Kentucky and Arkansas as of March 2019, noting that officials had not taken steps to prevent coverage losses stemming from the work requirement. 12. (People who don’t pay the premiums are not disenrolled under the terms of Arkansas Works, and the state cannot send the overdue premiums to collections, place a lien on property, garnish wages, report the unpaid amounts to credit monitoring agencies, etc.). State Capitol Building500 Woodlane StreetSuite 320 Little Rock, Arkansas72201-1090, State Capitol Building500 Woodlane Street, Suite 320 Little Rock, Arkansas 72201-1090, In Session: 501-682-2902Out of Session: 501-682-6107. Spending bills in Arkansas must get a supermajority of 75 percent of the legislature for approval, so creation of the private option was a battle. }); But if current enrollees with income above the poverty level had been required to switch to regular exchange plans instead of Arkansas Works, the state would no longer be paying for any of their coverage. (The work requirement took effect for people age 30-49 in June 2018 and for those under 30 starting in January 2019.) You may submit your information through this form, or call In order to continue to receive enhanced federal Medicaid funding to address the COVID pandemic, states have to agree to halt all coverage terminations for the duration of the public health emergency, and all states have done so. The mission of healthinsurance.org and its editorial team is to provide information and resources that help American consumers make informed choices about buying and keeping health coverage. Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion program was initially called the Arkansas Health Care Independence Program, but transitioned to Arkansas Works as of 2017. If those enrollees had been transitioned to a plan in the exchange, their premiums (for the second-lowest-cost silver plan) would have also been about 2 percent of their income, but their cost-sharing (even with cost-sharing reductions) would have been much higher than it is under Medicaid, as total premiums and cost-sharing cannot exceed 5 percent of income in the Medicaid program (ie, total premiums and out-of-pocket costs cannot exceed $800/year if a person is earning $16,000. The Arkansas legislature passed S.B.3 and H.B.1003 in May 2017; Hutchinson signed them into law the next day. However, the work requirement has been struck down by federal courts, and the current administration in Washington has signaled that it does not intend to make it a part of Medicaid. Can I be enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid at the same time? Arkansas lawmakers approve overhaul of Medicaid expansion March 30, 2021 LITTLE ROCK, Ark. But the following week the measure was approved was signed into law in early April, reauthorizing Medicaid expansion funding in Arkansas until the end of June 2020. Before the pandemic, about 250,000 people were eligible. The specialized ACA Medicaid expansion in AR is called Arkansas Works. The details of the state’s Medicaid waiver are described below. Timeline of Arkansas Medicaid Expansion Sept. 27, 2013. jQuery('div.band.result').addClass('finished'); In Arkansas, the Arkansas Department of Human Services’ (DHS) Division of Medical Services (DMS) is the agency that administers the state’s Medicaid program. The effort to keep Arkansas' Medicaid expansion another year faced uncertainty on Tuesday, with the program falling short of the votes needed for its reauthorization in the state Legislature. She has written dozens of opinions and educational pieces about the Affordable Care Act for healthinsurance.org. The large majority — 12,722 enrollees — did not meet the reporting/exemption requirements. The notable modifications under Arkansas Works were: CMS put a cap on the total per-person amount that they would pay for the Private Option/Arkansas Works, in order to ensure that the privatized version of Medicaid expansion wouldn’t cost the federal government more than an expansion of fee-for-service coverage. The second is people in rural areas with mental illness or drug abuse problems. As of September 2020, there were more than 853,000 people enrolled in Arkansas Medicaid and CHIP, which was a little higher than it had been at the start of the year.