{"id":23277,"date":"2012-07-05T05:15:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T05:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=23277"},"modified":"2012-07-05T05:15:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T05:15:00","slug":"reserve-account-for-medicaid-matching-funds-under-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/reserve-account-for-medicaid-matching-funds-under-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Reserve account for Medicaid matching funds under review"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">Officials of the CNMI Medicaid Office disclosed to Saipan Tribune that a proposal that aims to address the funding requirements for the program is now being reviewed by the Fitial administration&#8217;s legal counsel.<\/span><\/div>\n<p>Gov. Benigno R. Fitial&#8217;s special adviser on the Medicaid program, Esther Mu\u00f1a, and administrator Helen Sablan said they have recommended the creation of a separate account that will be reserved strictly for Medicaid matching funds so it could consistently pay for the program&#8217;s obligations and other expenses.<\/p>\n<p>Saipan Tribune learned that the plan is to introduce legislation that would create a reserve account for specific taxes that will be solely intended for Medicaid matching requirements.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the Legislature can increase certain taxes such as for tobacco and a portion of that tax will go directly to the reserved account for the Medicaid program.<\/p>\n<p>At present, all appropriations and collections of the government go directly to the general fund and, until it has funds, that&#8217;s the only time the government can pay out obligations, such as that for Medicaid.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, the CNMI pays 45 percent of the program&#8217;s operations, while the federal side is 55 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Sablan and Muna said that once review of the proposal is completed, the administration will push for the creation of a bill that they hope would become law.<\/p>\n<p>The two could not immediately say how soon this will happen or when legislation may be crafted and introduced.<\/p>\n<p>Medicaid is a health program for people and families with low incomes and resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Officials of the CNMI Medicaid Office disclosed to Saipan Tribune that a proposal that aims&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,55,67,38],"class_list":["post-23277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-health-2","tag-people","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23277","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\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}