A legislative panel’s decision to speed the release of a special audit report on the state’s Medicaid program drew criticism Wednesday from Democrats, who suggested political motivations had skewed its findings, and state Medicaid officials, who called flaws in the report “alarming.”
Sen. Bryan King, a Green Forest Republican and head of the Legislative Auditing Committee, said he wanted to hurry the report’s debut for Friday, although it was originally scheduled for a March release.
Lawmakers need information to make decision on Medicaid issues, King said, including whether to expand the program with federal aid by up to 250,000 Arkansans.
“Medicaid is such a pressing issue,” he said.
Gov. Mike Beebe found the methodologies and procedures in the audit report “troubling and alarming,” said Matt DeCample, Beebe’s spokesman.
“It’s unusual to see that from an esteemed operation like Legislative Audit,” De-Cample said.
The Department of Human Services, which administers the $5 billion program thatcovers about 780,000 people, issued a statement saying the report “is very premature and highly unusual.”
A University of Arkansas at Little Rock statistician found flawed sampling procedures and unsupported conclusions, the Human Services Department statement said.
The agency had a week to respond to 25,000 documents, department officials said.
“In all the years that DHS has worked with the Legislative Audit, we have never seen a report like this in tone. It uses sensational but rare examples and questionable methodologies to paint the program in the worst light,”the statement said.
Sen. Linda Chesterfield, a Little Rock Democrat who is vice-chairman of the Legislative Audit Committee, told King that she was “disappointed” that he didn’t let her know about the Medicaid report before the meeting.
After the meeting, Chesterfield said the large number of Republicans at the meeting, including House Speaker Davy Carter, was telling.
“Draw your own conclusions,” Chesterfield said. “There were only two Democrats there - me and [Sen. Eddie] Cheatham. The only people who seemed to know about it were my Republicancolleagues. The speaker of the House was at the meeting. The speaker doesn’t come to executive committee meetings of Legislative Audit. The chair of House Public Health [Republican Rep. John Burris] was there,” Chesterfield said.
Other Republican leaders attending the meeting included Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, the chairman of the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor committee, Sens. Jonathan Dismang and David Sanders, and House Majority Leader Bruce Westerman.
King declined comment on the report’s contents, buthe said his motivation was to educate the Legislature.
“Anything we do can be a political move; the reality is: is it a fair criticism or not? You know, all we’ve talked about is Medicaid since this session’s been going; it’s one of the driving forces of this session,” King said. “I felt it needed to be an early release because you’re keeping information for discussion before the members.”
Most of the report will contain previously released audits from 2009-2011, saidRoger Norman, Legislative Audit Division director. The report also will include 2012 findings that haven’t been previously made available.
A cursory review of the 2009 single audit report by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed findings that the Human Services Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid benefits to small numbers of incarcerated people, people in the country illegally and others who were ineligible.
The federal government requested repayment for less than 1 percent of the costs noted in the 2009 audit, said Amy Webb, agency spokesman.
Totals for the repayments weren’t immediately available.
In 2011, only $69,000 of the $1.3 million in questionable costs for physically disabled adults had to be repaid, Webb said.
Chesterfield suggested that the timing of the report, much of it filled with currently available information, was political.
“I’m no rocket scientist, but why now?” Chesterfield said.
“What does the audit findings of DHS have to do with Medicaid expansion except to throw DHS in a bad light and make whatever they say suspect,” she said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/31/2013