1. United States
2. N.J.
3. Letter

The House, in a near-unanimous vote Friday, approved a Senate bill aimed at cleaning up administrative procedures that have caused headaches and disenrollments for people seeking Medicaid waivers for coverage of developmental disabilities. If the Senate agrees to the changes to Senate Bill 742 and sends it to the governor for his signature, it would be a small, but welcome, win for a community that faces a second year of massive cuts to state funding for those services. “We needed this win given everything that’s happened with the budget,” Ande Kolp, executive director for the Arc of Maryland, said earlier this week when SB 742 moved through the House Health Committee. “People are still suffering with being dropped out of the Medicaid waiver, so this will go a long way to helping correct that.” For families and advocates who have been struggling to maintain that Medicaid coverage, “erroneous” disenrollments can mean a loss of services that can be life-threatening for the vulnerable community. That’s why advocates are excited to see legislation to fix some of the administrative challenges nearing final approval. SB 742 addresses what are called “procedural terminations” in which the annual reapplication process for the waiver is not completed for an administrative reason – errors in submitting the paperwork, inadequate notice by the state, or other disruptions in the application process. Over the last year, hundreds of people learned they were suddenly no longer covered by a Medicaid waiver, despite having no change in either their financial situation or the developmental disabilities that qualified them for the waiver in the first place. Adding to their troubles, many found that the appeals process to reinstate coverage was just as challenging to navigate, leading some to be without coverage for months on end. SB 742, called the Protecting People with Disabilities Act, would remove a 90-day timeframe to appeal a threatened disenrollment. It would also ensure that those who are disenrolled due to the department’s failure to process the application in a timely manner will have their services reinstated once the department establishes eligibility. The bill also ensures that the department cannot disenroll someone from the waiver due to missing or incomplete documentation until state officials have checked their own data to determine if the participant is eligible, have given clear and specific notice to the recipient and verified that the participant got the notice. Ande Kolp, executive director for the Arc of Maryland, and Greg Snyder with the Maryland Association of Community Services, at a Health Committee voting session Monday. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters) “The point in this bill is that, as a state, we shouldn’t let procedural breakdowns or operational breakdowns impact people’s desperately needed services,” Greg Snyder with the Maryland Association of Community Services said Wednesday. “This bill aims at getting at … making sure that those procedural disenrollments don’t happen,” Snyder said. “So the people that need it get the services … they need to thrive in their communities.” Del. Aaron M. Kaufman (D-Montgomery), who led floor discussion on the bill Wednesday, agreed that the application and appeals process is hard to navigate for most people. “Having seen the paperwork, it’s very complicated, especially for laymen,” Kauffman said Thursday during floor discussion on the legislation. “So if they’re having their parents or an aunt help them fill it out, it’s easy to miss on a technicality.” Those who receive services through a community provider, such as the Arc of Maryland, may be able to work with someone from the provider to sort out those administrative hurdles. But Kolp noted that waiver recipients who self-direct their services may not have the same support. “In self-direction, the parent’s the caregiver. Suddenly, the child is at home. The parent is unable to get paid,” she said. “They can’t get any help, and they don’t know where to turn. It’s not like there’s this person you can call and they’ll take care of you. “You go through a billion phone calls before you get somebody that can help you, and it can take months,” she added. The final approval of the legislation would be a much-needed victory after another round of steep budget cuts to the Developmental Disabilities Administration, the state agency that oversees the Medicaid waiver. The budget signed just this week locks in a $127 million cut in state funds to the agency, which will equate to over $250 million when federal match dollars are taken into account. It’s the second year in a row that the Moore administration and lawmakers slashed funding for the DDA to offset what state officials say is unsustainable cost growth at the agency. Last year, the state cut $164 million from the DDA budget. The cuts this year and last were less than originally proposed, but still harsh to those receiving services, say.