{"id":351940,"date":"2021-09-18T23:47:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T13:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=351940"},"modified":"2021-09-18T23:47:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-18T13:47:36","slug":"kilili-no-medicaid-cliff-for-marianas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/kilili-no-medicaid-cliff-for-marianas\/","title":{"rendered":"Kilili: No Medicaid \u2018cliff\u2019 for Marianas"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014<\/strong>Federal Medicaid for the Marianas will be $64,010,000 for fiscal year 2022, beginning Oct. 1, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) announced today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Biden administration has sent notification to the Marianas Medicaid director,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cRather than dealing with a Medicaid \u2018cliff,\u2019 the Commonwealth will actually be eligible for more money in fiscal 2022 than we received this year. This is very good news.\u201d<\/p>\n

Future years\u2019 funding will increase by an inflation factor based on $64 million, eliminating future cliffs, Sablan added.<\/p>\n

Sablan has been working on the inadequacy of Medicaid funding throughout his years in office. He was able to get a substantial increase in funding for the Marianas included in the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, in 2010. When that money expired two years ago, he secured an even larger increase to $60 million per year for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 in U.S. Public Law 116-94.<\/p>\n

USPL 116-94 also gave the Biden administration the basis for its decision this week to apply a statutory inflation factor to the current amount and award the Marianas with $64 million beginning Oct. 1 and to use $64 million as the basis for calculating future year increases.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been working with the Biden administration for months on this issue,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cWe asked the President to make a commitment to Medicaid for the insular areas in his 2022 budget proposal; and he did. I am very grateful to his support and to my former House colleague, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, for this week\u2019s decision to permanently increase funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

USPL 116-94 also lowered the local match for the Marianas from 45% to 17%, but under current law the local match will rise again in fiscal 2022 to 39%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently making the case to Republicans in Congress to continue the local match at 17%,\u201d Sablan said. \u201cWe want to include that extension in the continuing resolution that will be voted on next week to keep the government funded.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, I understand that Republicans have said they are opposed to keeping the local match at the lower level. So, I am asking Gov. [Ralph DLG] Torres to begin calling his Republican colleagues who are standing in the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the governor cannot convince his Republican friends, then he has the $483 million that we provided him in American Rescue Plan Act a few months ago to make the local match\u2014only about $29 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith all that cash at his disposal, I certainly hope the governor will be willing to help the 38,000 people in the Marianas who depend on Medicaid for their health care,\u201d Sablan said. (PR)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014Federal Medicaid for the Marianas will be $64,010,000 for fiscal year 2022, beginning Oct….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":350455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[23769,23770,23771,23772,23773],"class_list":["post-351940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cliff","tag-healthcare","tag-kilili","tag-marianas","tag-medicaid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351940","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\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}