Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta is urging the Legislature to conduct an oversight hearing on the Medicaid program, which continuous to certify eligible recipients even without having enough funding to provide for their services.<\/p>\n
The Medicaid program was first implemented in 1979. It is a federal\/state program administered by states and funded by both federal and states revenues through a 50-50 matching ratio. Each year, the federal cap is set at $5 million and requires an equal amount from the CNMI government. Any expenses in excess of the $10-million level is shouldered by the state.<\/p>\n
Babauta disclosed in an interview yesterday that the program currently has 18,000 eligible recipients, compared to the 3,000 clients recorded in 1994. Without a policy that caps the total number of people that will be certified every year, the local government has been shouldering millions of dollars on top of the $5 million local matching it provides for the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we really need to work on is the removal of the cap and maybe changing the current ratio [of 50-50 matching] because we cannot afford it anymore,\u201d Babauta said.<\/p>\n
Babauta has already asked for Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan\u2019s (Ind-MP) help in asking the federal government with this. He said it would greatly aid the CNMI if the reimbursement rate is changed to a 72-25 ratio, similar to what other states like Mississippi enjoys.<\/p>\n
At present, the CNMI government owes some $800,000 in reimbursement for patients\u2019 services. Babauta said he is not so worried about this unpaid amount as the future of the program in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Medicaid office continues to certify people as eligible so our numbers are increasing but with the same cap [of $5 million]. So we are certifying more and more people with inability to pay for services and that\u2019s my problem. This is all about who pays for the services and if we don\u2019t have the money for it, we really should not be certifying any more people. We don\u2019t want to mislead people, but that\u2019s what happening now. We certify people, knowing\u2026we cannot afford to pay for their services,\u201d said Babauta.<\/p>\n
The CNMI government, through the Legislature, can help if a measure is crafted that will limit the number of people that will be certified under the program each year. <\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that if they qualify they need to be certified\u2026but we have to be realistic on how much we can afford. I am urging the Legislature to hold open hearings for parties so everybody knows where we are because this situation worsens our financial problems than help. I believe this is really about policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to Babauta, the 50-50 matching fund requirement was temporarily reduced to 55-45 sharing because of the funds from the American Recovery Reinvestment Act. However, the original sharing ratio will be back next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. chief executive officer Juan N. Babauta is urging the Legislature to conduct an oversight hearing on the Medicaid program, which continuous to certify eligible recipients even without having enough funding to provide for their services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}