LITTLE ROCK — More than 870,000 Arkansas residents receive some type of health care through Medicaid, which is operated by the state Department of Human Services.
The department has made public a variety of cost-cutting ideas and has been gathering input from people who would be affected by them. Stakeholders include physicians and clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, therapists, rehabilitation and long-term care facilities.
Last year the department trimmed the number of Medicaid recipients in Arkansas, after the expiration of the national public health emergency caused by the Covid epidemic. During the pandemic Arkansas Medicaid rolls reached a high of more than 1,151,000 people.
After a six-month period of redetermining eligibility of recipients, the program now serves about 245,000 adults, 394,000 children and 250,000 adults in ARHOME. That is a health care program for adults who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The department uses Medicaid dollars to subsidize their private health insurance.
Many people drop off the rolls and get back on again, depending on their financial circumstances. On a particular day the number of Medicaid enrollees is about 870,000 people, but over the course of last year more than a million Arkansas residents received some type of health care through the program.
The steady growth in the cost of the program is a concern for legislators. Last year the state and federal governments combined to spend $9 billion on the Arkansas Medicaid program. Federal funding accounts for 72 percent of the total, but in October that will go down to 71.14 percent. If Medicaid spending stays the same, this change will shift $55 million in costs from the federal government to the state.