Published: Apr. 9, 2019
By: Sheridan Wall, LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Department of Health acknowledged Tuesday that 1,672 people had received Medicaid coverage even though they earned at least $100,000 in 2017. Department officials said nearly all of them had since been stripped from the rolls.
An additional 8,474 people were enrolled in Medicaid even though the Louisiana Department of Revenue later found that they had reported incomes of $50,000 to $100,000 on their 2017 tax returns.
Jen Steele, the state Medicaid director, said that 3,550 of those people are no longer enrolled, and 540 have supplied wage data supporting their current eligibility. She said the other 4,384 cases remain under review.
The data about these cases came to light at a House Appropriations Committee hearing as Republican legislators renewed their attacks on how the administration of Gov. John Bel Edwards has managed the program.
Edwards, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year, has cited his support for the basic Medicaid program and his expansion of it to include nearly 500,000 residents making more than poverty-level wages as among his most significant achievements.
Republicans have questioned the cost of the expansion, and state auditors have said the program had been managed too loosely. The Health Department has since beefed up computer systems to check eligibility and recently kicked 30,000 people off the rolls.
Read more in the Shreveport Times.
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 