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Related links Center for Medicaid and State Operations Internet Information |
Thousands to recoup Medicaid benefits
Posted
4-17-2000 Washington. The Clinton administration has ordered states to restore Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of poor people who were improperly cut off from the program after they left the welfare rolls. In a letter sent to every state Medicaid director, the administration said that states had failed to uncouple their welfare and healthcare programs as Congress required when it approved welfare reform in 1996. Timothy W. Westmoreland, the top federal Medicaid official, said in the letter that it is clear that "eligible children and parents have lost out on coverage" as a result of computer glitches and human error. Advocates for the poor have argued since 1996 that states, in effect, were punishing people who left welfare by improperly terminating their Medicaid benefits. In approving welfare reform, Congress wanted to restrict eligibility for cash assistance while preserving access to Medicaid. "The culture now in the welfare world is, ‘Let’s keep them off welfare at all costs,’ " said Joan Alker, assistant director of government affairs for Families USA, a nonprofit consumer health advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. "And that has clearly had a spillover effect on Medicaid." No one knows how many people have been denied health benefits because of errors. But a study commissioned by Families USA estimated that 675,000 eligible people lost Medicaid benefits in the first year of welfare reform, Alker said. In Washington state, which last year approved a settlement to restore the benefits, more than 100,000 eligible people were found to have been terminated from Medicaid. About 60 percent of all Medicaid recipients are children. In the letter, Westmoreland said federal law requires states to reinstate people who were wrongfully terminated from Medicaid, but he left it up to the states to determine whether to pay medical bills accrued by eligible people since they lost their benefits. "That’s too bad," Alker said. "We wish the federal government had said states have to pay those back bills."
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