Comments From Mondays (06/17/13) Emergency NM HIX Board Meeting

From Jane Wishner Health Policy Advocate/Consultant:

It was definitely lively.   Several members of the board were in the room; most were on the phone including the Chair and Vice Chair, both of whom expressed frustration at this coming up on an emergency basis.  

Essentially HSD claims that it had no idea it would have to set up ASPEN to communicate with the federal exchange and that it will cost $7.5 million to do so and that, as Secretary Squier said over the phone:  "We have no money."   In fact, there is an opportunity for the state to get 90/10 matching funds to convert to MAGI as of October 1st.  (I've attached a copy of the announcement in mid-May).

Nicole Comeaux from CCIIO was on the phone.  She explained that establshment grant funding could not be used for what HSD was requesting but that CCIIO had determined that about $8.2 million in already-incurred costs for ASPEN could have been covered by establishment funds and therefore that those funds could be transferred to HSD.    

Jason Sandel was pretty angry that this had happened on an emergency basis, that he had not been consulted about setting up the meeting apparently and that nothing had been said about it at prior meetings.  Patsy Romero, who chair the Finance Committee,  agreed (also over the phone) and said that they had been told it would cost only about $2 million to accomplish this.   Apparently the $7.5 million figure is only about a week old.

JR Damron agreed that this is not how they should do business and that he only learned of it on Friday.   He then asked Squier when the grant money would be transferred from HSD to the Exchange. She said in five days.   

Jason wanted the full board to meet and consider this at the regular meeting.  But Martin HIckey urged them to figure out what happened, how it occurred but not to wait to authorize the IT changes.

So the board did authorize the transfer of the funds.  Squier will inform Deloitte of this (everyone agreed that Deloitte is benefiting considerably from this) and CCIIO will work it out as being reimbursement for already-incurred expenses.

Martin Hickey after the meeting formally ended (JR said they could not discuss anything else because of the Open Meetings notice requirements) asked MIke Nunez to clarify that the $20 million grant application would be used for consumer outreach and enrollment assistance.  He referred to the article that quoted Matt Kennicott and said there had been confusion raised by that article.  MIke made clear that enrollment assistance was included in that pot of money.   Secretary Squier was not on the line during that discussion.   

I've attached a copy of the CMS guidance on the MAGI enrollment.  It also has some other important options for states which others on this listserv may already be working on.