In December, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced a plan to bring relief to thousands of families stuck on a waiting list for Medicaid-funded services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Under the governor’s plan, Arkansas will spend an additional $37.6…
Two months ago, things were looking dire for Empower Healthcare Solutions, a managed care organization that serves roughly 20,000 Arkansas Medicaid beneficiaries with developmental disabilities, severe behavioral health disorders and other complex needs. The attorney general’s office was investigating the…
In June 2018, when Arkansas became the first state in the nation to implement work requirements for certain Medicaid beneficiaries, Governor Hutchinson was triumphant. “We’ve wanted to establish a work requirement … for a long time,” he said at the…
In a letter, Deputy Attorney General Lloyd Warford said a full investigation into allegations of fraud was only now getting under way. But an initial review found “sufficient credible evidence” to support the suspension of Empower from the Medicaid program.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services has suspended new enrollment for Empower Healthcare Solutions, a managed care organization serving about 20,000 Medicaid beneficiaries with intellectual or developmental disabilities, behavioral health disorders or both. Empower is one of four Provider-led Arkansas…
This story was updated with additional details at 10:45 a.m., Saturday, Nov. 6. Empower Healthcare Solutions, a managed care organization that serves almost 20,000 Arkansas Medicaid beneficiaries with complex health needs, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday against…
As the COVID-19 crisis unfolds, the Arkansas Department of Human Services is relaxing certain policies that have led to the removal of tens of thousands of Arkansans from the state’s Medicaid rolls in recent years. Around 11,000 beneficiaries whose coverage was terminated at the end of last month have now been reinstated. Many more will be reinstated as the state works to implement guidance from the federal government.
A study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Arkansas’s Medicaid work requirement led to lower insurance rates among 30- to 49-year-olds in 2018, the group targeted by the first-of-its-kind work rule last year. The researchers also concluded that the policy did not lead to a rise in employment among this target population.
“I’ve seen over the years just how many people have benefited from assisted living. It saved them from going to the nursing home when it wasn’t safe for them to live at home,” Riedel said. The rate cut will push “more and more people into nursing facilities that shouldn’t be there."
In a report released Monday, the state Department of Human Services said it had terminated the health insurance of another 4,109 individuals due to Governor Hutchinson's work requirement for certain beneficiaries of Arkansas Works, the state's Medicaid expansion program for low-income adults. Those people are now barred from Arkansas Works until Jan. 1.
On Thursday, the same day that Governor Hutchinson signed legislation approving “Arkansas Works 2.0,” his plan to enact changes to the state’s Medicaid expansion program, the U.S. House passed a bill that would undermine many of the program’s key tenets.
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