Minnesota's Medicaid freeze won't thaw anytime soon

The Medicaid freeze impacting over a million Minnesotans doesn't look to be thawing anytime soon. 

About $350 million in Medicaid for Minnesota has been deferred so far.

On Thursday, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, addressed the freeze as part of a larger Department of Justice news conference related to recent criminal indictments for fraud cases in Minnesota. He said state leaders haven't done a good enough job to get the deferred money flowing again.

The state submitted documents that are supposed to identify potential Medicaid fraud, but Oz said the documents were not satisfactory.

The state was also asked to revalidate providers that fell into categories considered high-risk for fraud. The categories identified included services like night supervision, non-emergency medical transportation, and home support.

In a recent update from the state on May 7, Oz said 5,600 people need to be re-validated, but 40% of them have either not responded or their response was inadequate.

"We believe that by the end of this month, which is the deadline, that half of these providers may no longer be allowed to provide services. That is a lot of people doing things to other human beings that are not supposed to have been able to do them ," said Dr. Oz.

The deferral has a big impact statewide. There are 1.3 million people who rely on Medicaid in Minnesota, of which 42% are children. Another 9% are people with disabilities.

If the deferral continues into the next fiscal quarter, those Minnesotans could miss out on another $260 million in Medicaid funding.