Home > posts > Delay in Obamacare’s ‘Seamless’ Online Medicaid Enrollment Could Morph into an Unfunded Mandate
December 5th, 2013 3:29 pm
Delay in Obamacare’s ‘Seamless’ Online Medicaid Enrollment Could Morph into an Unfunded Mandate

Obamacare’s “original vision of seamless Medicaid enrollment for all consumers will remain elusive indefinitely because of varying levels of readiness among states and the continued inability of the feds to transfer accounts directly to individual Medicaid agencies,” reports Governing.

That’s more bad news for Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange serving 36 states.

The problem is simple but not easy to fix. Because there is such a wide disparity among states in their ability to connect their Medicaid databases to the federal server, many of those who qualify for Medicaid can’t sign up for the program online. To compensate, federal workers send digital copies of an applicant’s qualifying information to state counterparts who then must verify eligibility.

Bottom line: All this checking and rechecking loses the efficiency gains assumed by Obamacare’s drafters. Among others, these cost savings were counted toward the health law’s now dubious claim of deficit neutrality.

Now the bad news for states.

Since every state participates in Medicaid, problems with the program created by Obamacare will impact state budgets regardless of whether they run their own health insurance exchange or let the feds do it. That’s because the exchanges are designed to serve those who don’t qualify for Medicaid. If seamless Medicaid enrollment proves impossible, then the resulting expenditures to meet the uptick in demand will be yet another unfunded mandate passed on to state taxpayers.

Comments are closed.