State to correct Medicaid shortfall

Utah state government will find a way to fill a $7.5 million "shortfall" in Medicaid money to local hospitals, state leaders said Friday.

"We'll take care of this on a temporary basis with one-time monies," said House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, who has led the state's health-care reform effort. "We get something like $1.8 billion a year in Medicaid, so this $7.5 million is almost like a rounding error."

But all players, hospitals, Medicaid advocates and users, the governor and state agencies, must all "remain at the table to find a permanent solution," Clark adds, and not just let hospitals off the hook as other state agencies and providers suffer serious budget cutbacks.

It is now unclear if the issue must be put on a May 20 special legislative session. "That would be the sure fix, but there are so many moving parts to this machine" that it may be possible for state officials to just fill the gap until the January 2010 general legislative session, Clark said.

Clark said hospitals, as well as other social and medical services "all have to have a haircut" in the state's trimming back $1 billion in spending for fiscal 2010, which starts July 1.

However, there were mistakes made in the complicated Medicaid budgeting process that legislators and advocate went through in the 2009 Legislature.

And cuts in the Medicaid hospital reimbursement program appear to be deeper than anticipated.

Not to panic, Clark said. The Legislature's budget staff say there are at least five options in coming up with the $7.5 million, including just taking it from a Medicaid overflow fund.

"The hospitals are looking to the tobacco tax," Clark said. But then a lot of health and human service advocates want lawmakers to increase the state tobacco tax for their benefit, also.

There are not plans to take up the tobacco tax, or a hospital bed tax, or any other revenue generating option in the May 20 special session, Clark said.

But, in looking to a long-term solution for the hospitals' Medicaid funding problem, those and all other ideas should remain on the table, the speaker said.

"We'll solve this (funding shortfall) for fiscal 2010. And then we'll study this problem over the summer and come up with a long-term solution" for the 2010 Legislature, Clark said.

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