Our Health Policy Matters

States’ Medicaid elephants are being dragged into the courts this year.  States had better be careful, or they just might get trampled under the weight of people they’ve failed to enroll. Last week, CT News Junkie reported the story of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of almost 7,000 potential Medicaid recipients in Connecticut as of November 2011 whose applications were not processed within the 45 days mandated by federal law.   And Health News Florida, among others, reported that Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of twenty-six states (Connecticut is not one of them) alleging that Congress exceeds its authority when it “coerces states into accepting onerous conditions” of participation in the Medicaid program –even when it pays 90-100% of the costs of those provisions.  The two battles raise similar questions about how states avoid Medicaid costs today. The Supreme Court brief is supposed ...

States’ Medicaid elephants are being dragged into the courts this year.  States had better be careful, or they just might get trampled under the weight of people they’ve failed to enroll. Last week, CT News Junkie reported the story of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of almost 7,000 potential Medicaid recipients in Connecticut as of November 2011 whose applications were not processed within the 45 days mandated by federal law.   And Health News Florida, among others, reported that Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of twenty-six states (Connecticut is not one of them) alleging that Congress exceeds its authority when it “coerces states into accepting onerous conditions” of participation in the Medicaid program –even when it pays 90-100% of the costs of those provisions.  The two battles raise similar questions about how states avoid Medicaid costs today. The Supreme Court brief is supposed ...