{"id":373915,"date":"2022-08-10T06:01:32","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T20:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=373915"},"modified":"2022-08-10T06:01:32","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T20:01:32","slug":"stop-misinforming-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/stop-misinforming-the-public\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Stop misinforming the public\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ralph DLG Torres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres describes it as \u201cunfortunate that there are elected officials who go on social media and other platforms to not just misinform the community but steer uncertainty in our own people\u201d about an alleged lack of $5 million in local matching funds to the Commonwealth Medicaid Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedicaid was never in jeopardy. Medicaid has always been taken care of not, just what we offered but we actually contribute more,\u201d said Torres in an interview Monday.<\/p>\n

The governor said his administration has always taken care of Medicaid recipients.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo again, there\u2019s no shortage of $5 million. We will continue to make our ends meet,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Torres suggested that any elected official who makes these claims should \u201cplease do the homework, because it\u2019s an embarrassment and an insult\u201d to the institution who work so hard protecting the CNMI\u2019\u2019s people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have elected officials going out and misinforming the community. It just shows how misinformed they are or they don\u2019t know the reality versus the political season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Last Aug. 2, saying the ripple effects of losing $28 million in federal Medicaid money will be devastating, Reps. Christina E. Sablan (D-Saipan) and Donald M. Manglona (Ind-Rota) urged Torres in a letter to exercise his 25% reprogramming authority to immediately transfer the required $5 million local matching funds to the Commonwealth Medicaid Agency.<\/p>\n

Sablan and Manglona said Torres may also direct the Finance secretary to expeditiously provide the House of Representatives with an updated status of all accounts to assist them in identifying the funding sources for an amendment to Public Law 22-08, the Annual Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2022.<\/p>\n

Sablan and Manglona chair the House Health and Welfare Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, respectively.<\/p>\n

Torres said yesterday that during a recent Health and Welfare Committee meeting, CNMI Medicaid Agency acting director Vicente Borja was asked what would happen if the administration does not give it the $5 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, obviously, if we don\u2019t give, then we return [the] $28 million. But the right question was never asked: Are we short $5 million?\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n

The governor said they know that no matter whatever funding grant the CNMI Medicaid has, if the administration does not come up with a local match, then the available federal money gets returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo again, if there is a misunderstanding, I want to let the community know\u2026that Medicaid is not short of money. And that, as always, the recipients will continue to get the services they need,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The governor said the $5 million is in the administration\u2019s proposed budget submission for fiscal year 2023, using different sources and reprogramming authorities to make the payment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres describes it as \u201cunfortunate that there are elected officials who go…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":373918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373915","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}