State officials continue to issue warnings as Medicaid work requirements are pending in Indiana.
The state estimates some 58,000 Indiana Medicaid enrollees are not currently meeting requirements set to take full effect in January.
Enrollees who are not exempt, will need to work 80 hours a month starting January first in order to qualify for Medicaid. Those requirements can be met with work, education, or volunteering.
“We are sharing this information to strongly encourage HIP [Healthy Indiana Plan] members to take personal responsibility for their coverage,” Family and Social Services Administration, or FSSA, Secretary Mitch Roob said in a statement. HIP is an Indiana Medicaid program.
People intending to apply in January for the first time needed to start meeting those work requirements beginning this month.
Sunshine Beam is with the Family and Social Services Administration, or the FSSA. She said the estimate of people who are out of compliance is based on information from income verification and other eligibility checks.
“Individuals who are not showing as working, individuals who are just not exempt for any other reason,” she said. “It's really sort of a guesstimate at this point.”
Beam said the FSSA is working to inform enrollees about the coming requirements. Roob has repeatedly raised concerns about the state’s readiness for the work requirements, calling for healthcare providers and hospitals to help ensure residents understand what they need to do to keep their coverage.
“We're definitely worried about members and making sure that they have all the information that they need and that they understand,” Beam said. “So I think that's why we're focused on consistent messaging.”
State officials still haven’t outlined a definition for medical frailty, a category that previously qualified a broader group of people for exemptions from work requirements. That’s changed under federal legislation and a bill passed by Indiana’s legislature earlier this year.
Beam has previously said the state is still working on what the updated definition will look like.
“Drafts of that information for the general public and for providers and such is all in the hopper to be released soon,” she said.
Advocates worry that many more enrollees will lose coverage because it will be difficult to keep up with the eligibility requirements.
Tracey Hutchings-Goetz is with Hoosier Action. She said enrollees, even those that should be exempt, should make sure they stay on top of their paperwork.
“Given the complexity of the program and the likelihood for errors, it is really critical that every HIP member is paying close attention,” she said. “We know that a lot can go wrong, and the state sometimes has inaccurate data.”
Hutchings-Goetz added that she feels the state’s messaging is putting a lot of the responsibility on Medicaid members.
“The state is obscuring their own responsibility for this system, which is not yet set up,” she said.
Contact Government Reporter Benjamin Thorp at bthorp@wfyi.org
