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Committee offers JFAC budget observations: Medicaid pharmacy costs, program transfers and foster-care staffing
Summary
Members reviewing Health & Welfare budget sections urged JFAC to examine Medicaid pharmacy spending, consider shifting LIHEAP and weatherization to energy, and noted foster-care staffing and mental-health contract spending as priorities.
A committee review of Health and Welfare budget sections produced recommendations and observations members plan to pass to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC).
Representative Kaler said she and Representative Redmond conducted a Medicaid budget review and recommended that the committee examine expansion sideboards, work and training requirements, and consider moving energy-related programs out of Health and Welfare. "Moving those to energy would, take a significant portion of responsibility out from underneath the Department of Health and Welfare," Kaler said, referring specifically to LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) and the Weatherization Assistance Program.
Kaler and others also urged more scrutiny of pharmacy spending in Medicaid. She noted, "There was over 500,000,000 spent in fiscal year 2022," and said the committee should ask which drugs and patients are driving those costs.
Representative Bieswanger and others discussed foster-care staffing needs. Bieswanger said the department expects requests for additional foster-care staff and argued that investing earlier in placements could reduce much higher costs later, such as group-home placements.
Representatives Wheeler and Thompson, who reviewed substance-abuse treatment and prevention funding, recommended JFAC favor block grants for flexibility and reported that the programs were managing their budgets tightly.
Representative Egbert, who examined the mental-health budget, said the agency request was "about 51 million" overall and that much of the spending flows through a Magellan contract. Representative Erickson provided facility-level census details: adolescent state-hospital west has 16 beds with a census of 8; state-hospital north had a census of 28 out of 60 beds; hospital south showed a census of 98 with 110 beds available.
Representative Levitt raised concerns about the Council on Developmental Disabilities participating in legislative advocacy at hearings and said he would not support funding for an organization he characterized as engaged in activism.
Committee members asked staff to compile the comments so the chair can present them to JFAC. No formal budget votes were taken in this meeting; members discussed priorities and suggested transfers and line-item scrutiny ahead of JFAC deliberations.
