Deborah Bachrach Speaks to Governing on Glitch in Online Medicaid Enrollment
"The Obamacare Glitch That Undermines Medicaid Enrollment"
Governing
December 4, 2013 - Manatt's Deborah Bachrach, a partner in the firm's Healthcare Division, spoke to Governing about a technical glitch that is preventing consumers from signing up for Medicaid through the online insurance marketplace.
As reported by Governing, the federal health exchange marketplace was supposed to electronically transfer people who qualify for Medicaid to their individual agencies for immediate enrollment. The federal government has delayed Medicaid account transfers indefinitely. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has instead been sending state Medicaid agencies digital files containing basic information about the visitors to the health exchange who may qualify for the program. That has required additional outreach from individual agencies to connect with those people.
Bachrach noted that states are ramping up staffing and call centers to get people signed up who couldn't do so electronically. And when people come to an agency and don't qualify for Medicaid, they're simply telling them to go to the federal exchange.
"Each state's in a different place, but I wouldn't say I'm worried," she said. "There's a heavy burden on both, on the state's side to bring the eligibility system up to standard and interface with the federal government, but for the federal government it's a bigger, more complicated undertaking because it has to accommodate so many state models."
Although some state-run marketplaces have serious technical problems, state-based exchanges have had far more success with seamless Medicaid enrollment because they don't need the federal government, Bachrach said.
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