Medicaid directors frustrated by feds

By Daniel C. Vock, Stateline.org Staff Writer

State Medicaid officials, meeting in Washington, D.C., made no progress this week in their standoff with the Bush administration over its plans to cut more than $12.2 billion over five years without consulting Congress.

A top official from the federal agency that oversees Medicaid told state Medicaid directors that the Bush administration plans to go ahead with new administrative rules that will crack down on controversial accounting maneuvers used by many states.

Dennis Smith, director of the federal government’s Center for Medicaid and State Operations, said issuing new regulations would ensure that all states played by the same rules when trying to secure matching grants from the federal government to run Medicaid, the joint state-federal health insurance program for the poor.