Legislative analysts flag risk from lower behavioral-health spending assumptions
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Summary
Legislative Services told the Finance Committee that the governor's budget assumes about $170 million less in behavioral-health Medicaid spending than prior projections; staff said the assumption could understate need and that updated estimates will be released next month.
Members of the Finance Committee pressed Legislative Services on a roughly $170 million downward revision in the behavioral-health Medicaid forecast in the governor's budget.
David Romans, fiscal and policy coordinator, said the administration's forecast assumes much slower growth in adult utilization of behavioral-health services than Legislative Services expected. "There is no big cost containment here," Romans said, adding that the administration appears to be projecting that last year's surge will soften.
A committee member asked whether previously delayed payments to providers (cited in the briefing as a backlog for certain counties) were included in the reduced projection; Romans said the lack of clear expenditure records makes it hard to know how much has been paid and that he did not believe payment backlogs explained the entire $171,000,000 difference. He said DLS will dig into the issue and update its estimates with the latest data in the next month.
Romans emphasized that Medicaid is an entitlement program and that reasonable forecasters can reach different conclusions based on the same trends. The committee directed staff to supply a deeper agency-level analysis when Legislative Services releases its full budgets and forecasts later this month.
