GOVERNOR Arnold I. Palacios on Wednesday said his administration and the Legislature will have to come up with $7.8 million in local fund matching requirement for the CNMI’s Medicaid allocation so eligible patients can continue to receive medical services up to September.
Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides health insurance to low-income individuals and families, including children, pregnant women, parents, seniors, and people with disabilities.
In an interview on Wednesday, the governor said the presumptive eligibility implemented by the federal government nationwide in response to the Covid-19 pandemic “opened up” Medicaid assistance to more residents and “ate up a lot of the resources.”
“We are actually fortunate that we still have some funds up to June or July,” he said. “Now we’ve got to source the funds to go beyond that, and that is the local match.”
He said $7.8 million in local funds “should carry us up to September.”
On May 22, 2023, the Office of the Governor issued a press release announcing that under the waiver authority of Section 1902(j) of the Social Security Act, “the Commonwealth Medicaid Agency will limit, reduce, or suspend services due to financial constraints and cost-cutting measures.”
CMA said the suspended services are dental services, outpatient physical therapy and related services, home health physical therapy, home health aide, or medical social worker services, prosthetic devices and vision services.
The suspension will take effect on June 1, 2023.
But “children ages 0-20 years may be excluded from the limitations, reductions, or suspensions of services for the purposes of early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment services through prior authorization. Prior authorization requests must accompany physician certification of medical necessity.”
Also on Wednesday, the governor noted that the previous Legislature never appropriated the $7.8 million local matching funds for Medicaid because former Finance Sec. David DLG Atalig assured the Senate during a budget hearing that there was money for it, and the source was supposed to be the Community Disaster Loan that the CNMI received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“It was supposed to be paid out of CDL. But that never happened [because] CDL was already exhausted, so the money was not there,” the governor said.
He said his administration is working with the Legislature on appropriating $7.8 million in Medicaid matching funds.
“We’re looking at different possibilities” to ensure that CNMI Medicaid will continue to provide services to eligible patients, he added.
“We are exploring different options into how to keep our government afloat and pay our major expenditures,” he said.
