State officials say they expect a funding shortfall for the state’s Medicaid program this fiscal year.
Pam Kilpatrick is with the Office of State Budget and Management. She told state lawmakers what her office’s estimate was at a Health and Human Services oversight meeting this morning:
“The 120 to 140 million dollars would be the sum total of all the moving parts. That will be attributed as the department walks through the specifics, and their methodologies, and they’re using more than one methodology to come up with this shortfall range.”
Other departments have come up with lower estimates.
Right now the predicted shortfall is less than those of recent years, but those numbers could change as the state continues to process backlogged Medicaid claims from both applicants and providers.
State lawmakers have long complained about the program’s ballooning costs, but those big increases are caused by more people qualifying for Medicaid, which serves low-income people.