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Senate Health and Welfare committee tasked with identifying $22M in general-fund savings in Health and Welfare budget
Summary
The committee heard an overview from JFAC co-chair Representative Josh Tanner and LSO analysts about Medicaid cost pressures, governor-recommended holdbacks and provider-rate changes, and tools members can use to craft numeric recommendations to JFAC.
Representative Josh Tanner, who co-chairs the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), told the Senate Health and Welfare Committee the panel must develop concrete recommendations for JFAC to address a projected shortfall. "We saw the governor do a holdback. So we got a 3% holdback. That's about a $6,500,000 holdback," Tanner said, and urged members to prepare numeric proposals rather than assumptions.
Tanner framed the work as a constitutional obligation to balance the state budget and described Medicaid supplemental claims and provider-rate pressures as the primary cost drivers the committee should examine. The committee chair said the current recommendation for this committee is $22,000,000 in general-fund savings (roughly $65,000,000 total), and asked members to assign divisions to review and return with prioritized, verifiable cuts or policy changes by early February so he can present them to JFAC.
