Contact: Ernie Blazar 202-224-7627 Shana Stribling 202-224-0309
Thursday, December 6, 2001

WASHINGTON - Senator Kit Bond today received a commitment from the head of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to resolve a $2 billion threat against Missouri’s health-care infrastructure.

During the Thursday morning meeting in Bond’s office, CMMS Administrator, Thomas A. Scully, pledged to the Senator to work to resolve his issue.

Following the meeting, Bond telephoned Missouri Governor Bob Holden and informed him of Scully’s new pledge of cooperation. He also urged the Governor to quickly seize this opportunity by negotiating in good faith.

Scully wants Missouri to pay the U.S. government as much as $2 billion for supposed, recent federal Medicaid overpayments.

“This punitive, threatened action by the federal government would reverse so many of Missouri’s recent gains in medical care,” said Bond. “This fight is not about federal money or complex accounting methods. It is about whether we are going to be allowed to continue improving medical care for countless Missouri women and children. I come down firmly on the side of protecting Missouri families who need help.”

Missouri’s Medicaid program currently cares for 500,000 Missouri children, 20,000 elderly and 30,000 pregnant women.

The dispute is centered upon arcane accounting methods used to measure the amount of federal Medicaid funds owed to Missouri. The state has long maintained that its accounting rules designed to get the maximum Medicaid funding possible fully comply with federal law. The federal government’s two year-old pursuit of this matter, on the other hand, centers on the claim that Missouri has somehow ‘cooked the books’ to get additional Medicaid money which federal regulators claim the state was not entitled to receive. Such a ruling would pave the way for the federal government to seek to recover what it claims are ‘overpayments.’