08/03/15  Medicaid Cutoff

According to Arkansas Department of Human Services spokeswoman Amy Webb, 33 thousand private-option enrollees and other Medicaid recipients were scheduled to lose their coverage this past Saturday as a result of a check on their incomes.  Another 14 thousand will lose their benefits September 1^st.

We were curious to know how many of those recipients were local, so we visited the Dallas County DHS office and spoke with local administrator Ramona Osborne.  She referred us to Webb, saying she wasn't allowed to comment on such issues.  She was able to tell us that there were 18 hundred 28 people in Dallas County signed up on Medicaid for the month of June. The first round of annual income checks began last month for Medicaid recipients, who had been enrolled for at least a year and whose eligibility is governed by rules that went into effect January 1, 2014, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.