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State staff recommend studying billing tobacco quit-line services to Medicaid; committee backs review

5670309 · August 19, 2025
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Legislative fiscal staff and the Department of Health and Human Services recommended evaluating whether the state can bill Medicaid for tobacco quit-line services; the committee voted to support a staff recommendation to have DHHS report options and fiscal impacts by Oct. 1, 2025.

The Social Services Appropriations Subcommittee endorsed a staff recommendation that the Department of Health and Human Services study whether Utah can bill Medicaid for tobacco cessation services delivered through the toll-free quit line and related programs.

Russell Franzen, staff to the committee, presented data showing the department spent about $800,000 on tobacco cessation services in 2025, delivered through phone and web-based supports. Franzen said roughly 1,500 phone callers used phone-based cessation services in 2025 and that about 41% of those phone callers were Medicaid enrollees. "We don't currently bill any of these…

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