High Risk Designation Reinforces Problems in Louisiana’s Medicaid Expansion
That the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently designated Louisiana’s Medicaid expansion to the able-bodied as “high risk,” following the release of a “deeply troubling” report by the state’s Legislative Auditor late last year, should surprise no one. As the Pelican Institute first reported last year, enrollment in Medicaid expansion has exploded, with state officials only now scrambling to detect waste and fraud in the program.
At the time of Medicaid expansion, officials first stated that enrollment could reach 306,000, only to up its projections later. By the time Pelican released its report last January, enrollment had exceeded 466,000—well above the state’s highest estimates. As of this March, enrollment now stands at 502,647, nearly a 10% increase compared to January 2018.
With enrollment nearly two-thirds higher than original projections, it should not have come as a shock to the state that ineligible individuals had enrolled in Medicaid expansion. As enrollment in expansion grew and grew, seemingly without limit, the state’s Department of Health should have spent more time scrutinizing enrollees, to make sure only eligible individuals receive program benefits.
Yet the auditor’s report last November found that out of 100 randomly selected applicants, fully 93 of them did not qualify for Medicaid benefits at some point during their coverage. Nearly two-thirds (66.3%) of the dollars given to insurers on these individuals’ behalf was improperly paid. Based on this sample, the auditor estimated that the Medicaid program spent up to $85.5 million providing benefits to ineligible individuals.
The applicants selected by the legislative auditor reported incomes to the state well beyond the threshold where they would qualify for Medicaid expansion. One Medicaid enrollee reported an income of $145,146—this for a one-person household. By comparison, Louisiana’s governor, John Bel Edwards, earns only $130,000 per year. So why did an individual making more than the state’s governor spend a full 12 months on a program for “low-income” individuals?
The Department of Health now claims that it has updated its enrollment systems to allow for more frequent eligibility checks, in the hopes of reducing the types of abuses uncovered by the legislative auditor. But if the Department of Health really wants to serve as a good steward of taxpayer dollars, it should go much farther, and propose solutions to the problem of Medicaid expansion crowding out private coverage.
In 2015, the Legislative Fiscal Office estimated that approximately 30-40% of Medicaid expansion enrollees would drop their private coverage to enroll in Medicaid. In other words, taxpayers would spend between $900 million and $1.3 billion over a five-year period providing insurance to individuals who already had coverage prior to expansion.
The dramatic increase in program enrollment, well beyond original projections, indicates that Medicaid expansion is indeed crowding out private coverage. An LSU survey released last year provided further confirmation, suggesting that approximately 75,000 individuals dropped employer-based or private coverage to enroll in Medicaid during the expansion’s first year alone. Yet the Department of Health has failed to acknowledge this problem, let alone propose solutions to fix it.
As the Pelican Institute report last year noted, Medicaid expansion has led to an explosion of government spending, taking the program away from the vulnerable populations for whom it was originally designed. Policy-makers should develop a way to phase out the expansion over time, while applying for a state-based waiver to reform—and transform—the Medicaid program.
This post was originally published at the Pelican Institute.