Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

I hope everyone had a great Easter. I was able to come home for a few days and spend time relaxing on the tractor. Rain slowed some of my progress, but that is needed as was a short rest.

This past week saw much action at the legislature as well as much tension. There was the infrastructure bill which passed that will bring some much-needed work around the state that has been put off year after year, greatly increasing need and costs. The key bill that did pass this past week was HB 658, Medicaid Reform and Integrity Act. This was quite contentious. HB 425 was a continuation of the existing Medicaid Expansion. To me, there were some surprising votes on the floor to support this act a few weeks ago but thankfully that bill failed. In the meantime, the efforts to work on reform of Medicaid surfaced. Without the Reform and Integrity Act, the financial hit to the general fund would have been $58 million dollars. As passed this last Thursday, HB 658 cost will be approximately $10 million. However you feel about the act, it will be a savings of $48 million. Here is a short version of the explanation of HB 658:

• Community Engagement/Work Requirements of 80 hours per month for able-bodied, non-working participants. Removal of those that do not meet the requirements.

• Health Risk Analysis on all participants to determine addictions, pre-chronic or other conditions.

• Disenrollment for not reporting change in circumstance (usually income) or being seen in audit as ineligible.

• Pay-fors that make up for the Federal funding reduction so no additional burden is placed on the taxpayers to continue the program.

• Avoidance of $58 million in General Fund appropriation if the program were to end.

• Requires 501D entities to reimburse the state for the state cost to insure their members.

• Creates private sector grant program to encourage Montana employers hiring of this population.

• Effective and usable asset testing.

• Employment or Re-Employment assessments on all members eligible for community engagement requirements. This is to continue to help participants to get out of poverty.

• Penalizes and disenrolls those that lie, deceive or misrepresent information to the department. (Can be charged with fraud and may be required to repay State any costs/benefits paid.)

• Removes statutory appropriation and replaces with transparent HB 2 process.

• Requires U.S. Citizenship or Qualified Alien status and Montana residency for ALL Medicaid programs.

• Requires validation of income for participant before any benefits are paid.

• Requires implementation of new waste/fraud/abuse systems in DPHHS for ALL Medicaid programs.

• Allows for future implementation of a third party administrator to administer the program.

• Increases premiums for those that stay on the program longer than two years.

• Sunsets the program on June 30, 2025, to require legislative re-evaluation of the program and legislative authorization to continue the program.

• If community engagement provisions of the law are successfully challenged in court, sunsets the bill at a time in which we will have final court disposition on work requirements.

We should be wrapping up this week. Thursday looks like a likely day, but not all the business is done yet and nothing is a sure thing since no bill is ever completely dead until we head home.

Thank you for all the emails, calls, and notes this past week. Hearing from folks both pro and con makes the hard votes easier, note however I did not say easy.

Representative Denley M. Loge, House District 14,

[email protected]