Rate of Enrollment in Medicaid Rose Rapidly, Report Says
The New York Times, September 30th, 2009
The recession is driving up enrollment in Medicaid
at higher than expected rates, threatening gargantuan state budget gaps
even as Congress and the White House seek to expand the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled, according to a survey of state Medicaid directors released Wednesday.
The annual survey,
conducted for the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and
the Uninsured, found that Medicaid had been spared the worst effects of
massive state budget shortfalls because of federal aid in the stimulus package. But it also revealed grave concerns about what will happen when that aid ends at the close of 2010.
Enrollment
in state Medicaid programs grew by an average of 5.4 percent in the
previous fiscal year, the highest rate in six years, according to the
Kaiser survey.
That was well above the 3.6 percent growth
forecast by the Medicaid directors a year earlier. In this year’s
survey, the directors projected that enrollment would continue to
accelerate in the current 2010 fiscal year, to 6.6 percent.
The
states and the federal government share the $333 billion annual cost of
Medicaid, which insured 62 million low-income and disabled people at
some point in 2007. It is the states, however, that regulate that
spending by setting eligibility cutoffs, benefit levels and provider
payments, within federal guidelines.
The Kaiser survey found
that the growth in spending on Medicaid in 2009, at 7.9 percent,
exceeded the growth in enrollment and was the highest in five years.
That
number also may increase this year. Based on initial legislative
appropriations, the agency directors projected spending growth of 6.3
percent. But three-fourths of them said they already fear those outlays
will not be enough and that lawmakers will need to alter their budgets,
either by finding more money or, more likely, by cutting benefits or
payments to doctors and
hospitals.
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