{"id":19649,"date":"2013-12-05T15:29:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T20:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=19649"},"modified":"2013-12-05T15:29:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T20:29:05","slug":"delay-in-obamacare%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98seamless%e2%80%99-online-medicaid-enrollment-could-morph-into-an-unfunded-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/19649\/delay-in-obamacare%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98seamless%e2%80%99-online-medicaid-enrollment-could-morph-into-an-unfunded-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"Delay in Obamacare\u2019s \u2018Seamless\u2019 Online Medicaid Enrollment Could Morph into an Unfunded Mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Obamacare\u2019s \u201coriginal 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,\u201d reports <a href=\"http:\/\/www.governing.com\/topics\/health-human-services\/The-Under-The-Radar-Obamacare-Glitch-That-Undermines-Medicaid-Enrollment.html \" target=\"_blank\">Governing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s more bad news for Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange serving 36 states.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t sign up for the program online. To compensate, federal workers send digital copies of an applicant\u2019s qualifying information to state counterparts who then must verify eligibility.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line: All this checking and rechecking loses the efficiency gains assumed by Obamacare\u2019s drafters. Among others, these cost savings were counted toward the health law\u2019s now dubious claim of deficit neutrality.<\/p>\n<p>Now the bad news for states.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s because the exchanges are designed to serve those who don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obamacare\u2019s \u201coriginal 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,\u201d reports Governing. That\u2019s more bad news for Healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange serving 36 states. The problem [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3308,1829,1009,232,35],"class_list":["post-19649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-mandate","tag-medicaid","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19653,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19649\/revisions\/19653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}