From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— More than 8,000 Medicaid members in the state may have had their private information leaked, the state Department of Health Services announced.
The agency yesterday said some Medicaid members getting benefits from Wisconsin’s Supplemental Security Income program had their “personal and private information” related to benefit increases sent to outdated addresses.
DHS yesterday sent notifications to 8,157 members whose information may have been exposed, after discovering the error on April 30 and stopping any future mailing to the outdated addresses.
Impacted members have been offered a year of free credit monitoring, and the agency is directing related questions to a dedicated call center.
See more details in the release below.
— DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson is warning of “growing budgetary challenges” with the state’s Medicaid fund with uncertainty around federal policy implementation and unpredictable economic conditions compounding the issue.
Johnson yesterday sent the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee an update on the Medicaid funding, projecting it’s now on track to finish the 2025-27 biennium with a shortfall of $322.4 million.
That’s slightly worse than the $263.5 million shortfall in general purpose revenue projected three months ago. The new projection is just more than 3% of the nearly $9.7 billion in GPR the state budgeted for the program over the 2025-27 biennium.
Johnson cited several reasons for the worsening outlook for the fund compared to March. That includes increased projected costs for prescription drugs, higher payments to hospitals and larger amounts of federally required payments for Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Medicaid.
Some of those costs are projected to be offset through lower BadgerCare Plus enrollment.
Yesterday’s letter came at the halfway point of the two-year biennium, and Johnson noted about two-thirds of states are predicting a high likelihood of budget shortfalls.
“As indicated in my March quarterly letter, across the country, payors and providers are experiencing a shifting healthcare landscape with costs increasing overall,” Johnson wrote.
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