Budget – Medicaid Reform
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Representative Patty Bellock questions
Quinn administration’s compliance with Medicaid reform.
In a Chicago budget hearing on Tuesday, September 17 that centered on
Medicaid and health care issues, members of the Illinois House questioned the
Department of Healthcare and Family Services (DHFS) about the Department’s implementation
of Medicaid reforms. The General
Assembly, bound by its constitutional duty to generate a balanced budget,
appropriated money to DHFS for Medicaid that assumed that these reforms, which
have been enacted into law, would be carried out.
One key reform, looked at closely by the Illinois House this week,
is the scrutiny of existing Medicaid patients to see how many of them are legally
ineligible for Medicaid. Existing law
assumes that this redetermination will be carried out under contract by the
private sector, and DHFS has contracted with Maximus, a service provider with
experience at performing database scrutinies and redeterminations of this
type.
