Rural Arkansas prepares for end of Medicaid expansion

Steve Brawner reports for KUAR Radio out of Little Rock under the headline, "Rural Arkansas health providers prep for post-COVID Medicaid roll reduction."  An excerpt follows: 

Arkansas rural health care providers are preparing for an uncertain future as the Department of Human Services begins disenrolling thousands of Medicaid recipients for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The federal Consolidated Appropriations Act, signed into law last December, allowed states after March 31 to begin dropping Medicaid recipients who are no longer eligible or who have not responded to DHS communications to renew their benefits.

The state had 1.138 million Medicaid enrollees as of February, a 23.6% increase over March 2020, according to DHS’s “Arkansas Comprehensive Unwinding Plan.”

At a Rural Health Association of Arkansas conference Thursday (April 20), Rep. Jack Ladyman, R-Jonesboro, noted that all Medicaid beneficiaries will have to be reevaluated over a period of six months. He said it’s been projected that up to 300,000 Arkansans could be dropped from Medicaid for a variety of reasons, including that they have gotten better insurance at work. But some will fall through the cracks.

“A lot of people are going to lose their coverage. We know that. We don’t know how many,” Ladyman said. “This is also, or could be, a major impact on the state budget.”

Ladyman said lawmakers budgeted taking money from the Medicaid reserve to help meet the needs.

Ladyman, a former chairman and now member of the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee, was part of a panel discussion that also included committee members Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, and Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville, as well as Sen. Fred Love, D-Mabelvale, a member of the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee.

David Mantz, CEO of the Dallas County Medical Center in Fordyce, told the legislative panelists that hospitals will not turn away former Medicaid patients and will likely provide more uncompensated care.

Gov. Sarah Sanders told Talk Business & Politics in an interview that aired on the “Capitol View” television program April 16 that she could call a special legislative session to deal with Medicaid issues including disenrollment and also her administration’s request for a waiver allowing the state to include a work requirement for some recipients.

I believe that waivers permitting states to include work requirements for Medicaid were struck down a few years ago, but maybe Sanders is hoping Arkansas will get another bite at that apple in the courts. 

There's plenty of evidence, of course, that some states' failure to expand Medicaid in the wake of the Affordable Care Act has led to the closure of many rural hospitals.  

Other recent stories about the struggles of rural health care providers in other states are here (Colorado) and here (California).