Governor petitioned to reinsure 53,000

$737,000 allocated to aid Medicaid sign-ups

Lindsey Reed of Little Rock watches Wednesday as Rich Huddleston, executive director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, calls on Gov. Asa Hutchinson to restore Medicaid-funded health insurance for people like Reed who lost their coverage when they didn’t respond to the state’s request for income records within a 10-day window. Reed also spoke at the state Capitol during a news conference held by a coalition of advocacy groups.
Lindsey Reed of Little Rock watches Wednesday as Rich Huddleston, executive director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, calls on Gov. Asa Hutchinson to restore Medicaid-funded health insurance for people like Reed who lost their coverage when they didn’t respond to the state’s request for income records within a 10-day window. Reed also spoke at the state Capitol during a news conference held by a coalition of advocacy groups.

A coalition of advocacy groups on Wednesday called for Gov. Asa Hutchinson to restore Medicaid coverage for more than 53,000 Arkansans who failed to provide proof of their incomes within a 10-day deadline.

The Arkansas Citizens First Congress, a coalition of 54 advocacy groups and charitable organizations, delivered a petition to Hutchinson with 2,300 signatures asking him to restore coverage to those whose insurance was canceled for failing to meet the deadline.

In an unrelated development Wednesday, a federal agency announced that the University of Arkansas and a Jonesboro nonprofit will receive $737,000 to help people sign up for insurance coverage over the next year, including the open enrollment period for individual consumers that begins Nov. 1.

The advocacy coalition's petition comes after the state Department of Human Services terminated coverage for almost 59,000 Arkansans as a result of a review of Medicaid recipients' eligibility that began in mid-May.

Most of those whose coverage has been terminated so far are covered under the private option, in which the state uses Medicaid funds to buy coverage on the state's health insurance exchange for adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level: $16,105 for an individual, for instance, or $32,913 for a family of four.

The call for restoring canceled coverage also comes after the Human Services Department announced last week that it would begin giving Medicaid recipients 30 days to respond to its requests for income-related records.

But the agency did not grant the additional time to about 17,000 Arkansans whose coverage had already been scheduled to end Tuesday for failing to provide the records within the previous 10-day limit.

The deadline change was prompted by what department officials described as "changed guidance" from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

A Human Services Department spokesman said Friday that federal authorities had not asked the state agency to retroactively apply the 30-day response deadline.

Of the 59,000 Arkansans whose Medicaid coverage has been terminated under the old deadline, about 4 percent, or 2,400, were found to be no longer eligible.

About 57,000 others failed to respond to the state's request for pay stubs or other income-related records within the required 10-day period.

About 6 percent of those who received termination notices -- 3,600 -- had their coverage restored or were not canceled when they provided the requested records after the deadline.

At an Arkansas Citizens First Congress news conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday, Randall Dollar, 53, of Jacksonville said he learned his private-option policy had been canceled while he was at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where he was scheduled for a heart operation last month.

He said he went ahead with the operation but couldn't afford to fill the prescriptions he was given after the surgery. Days later, he was treated for arterial fibrillation -- an irregular, rapid heartbeat -- at Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock.

His coverage was restored last week, but not before he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

The Human Services Department has said Medicaid will pay such claims through retroactive coverage as long as proof of Medicaid eligibility is presented within 90 days of the termination.

Lindsey Reed, 36, of Little Rock, who lost her job as a preschool teacher after suffering a traumatic brain injury, said she doesn't remember receiving any requests from the Human Services Department before being notified that coverage would be canceled as of Tuesday for her and her 10-year-old daughter.

Since then, she has submitted a letter to the Human Services Department stating that she has no income, but hasn't received word about the coverage.

"This has been a terrible experience, and I'm going through it along with thousands of Arkansans," Reed said.

Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said she can't discuss individual Medicaid cases because of health privacy laws.

Hutchinson spokesman J.R. Davis said the governor does not plan to rescind the cancellations, but he noted that those who lost coverage can have it restored by submitting income-related records to the Human Services Department.

Webb said her department is considering sending additional letters to those whose coverage was canceled encouraging them to submit the information.

When the department resumes its eligibility reviews, recipients will be sent two letters -- an initial request for income records and a reminder -- before their coverage is terminated, she said.

Previously, recipients were only sent one letter before the coverage was terminated.

The income reviews have been stopped while the department revises its notices to reflect the 30-day deadline.

The funds awarded Wednesday to the University of Arkansas' Partners for Inclusive Communities and the Jonesboro-based Enroll the Ridge will be used to provide outreach workers, known as navigators, to help private-option enrollees and others sign up for coverage and help those who have received requests for income records submit them to the Human Services Department.

The funding awarded to the Arkansas groups is part of $67 million going to the 34 states with federally operated exchanges. Funds were distributed according to the size of the state's uninsured population and enrollment in its exchange, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Last year, the two Arkansas organizations shared more than $930,000.

For a one-year period beginning Wednesday, Partners for Inclusive Communities, which researches issues faced by disabled people, will receive $416,871, down from the $749,370 it was awarded last year. Enroll the Ridge will receive $320,138, up from its award last year of $183,286.

David Deere, director of Partners for Inclusive Communities, said his group will reduce the number of navigators it employs or contracts for from 23 to 12.

Partners for Inclusive Communities will employ six navigators, including two supervisors directly, and pay for six others through contracts with Legal Aid of Arkansas and the Daughters of Charity Services of Arkansas, which operates health clinics in Dumas and Gould.

Because of the funding reduction, the group will no longer contract for navigators with the Greater Delta Alliance for Health, a coalition of hospitals in southeast Arkansas.

Enroll the Ridge will increase its navigators from five to eight, including one designated as a project coordinator, and more than double the number of counties it serves, to 23, director Jim Miles said.

The group will employ three navigators, including the project coordinator directly, and will pay for the others through contracts with Wrightsville-based Future Builders and the Tri-County Rural Health Network in Helena-West Helena.

Through a grant from the Fred Darragh Foundation, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families had funded the salaries of four outreach workers. The funding for those workers ended on April 30, said Sarah Pearce, a health policy fellow at the advocacy group.

Metro on 09/03/2015

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