Contact: Jason Mercier, Budget Research Analyst
(360) 956-3482

Accountability in action
Health Care Authority drops close to 20,000 from Basic Health Plan

Taxpayers benefit when state agencies are held accountable. This is a success story.

Remember when the state auditor revealed last year that 37,000 individuals receiving benefits on the state's Basic Health Plan had not provided proof of eligibility? The agency overseeing the program, the Health Care Authority (HCA), couldn't say how much it had overpaid to ineligible individuals, and nothing was being done to stop the problem or restore money wrongly distributed.

That has changed. Legislators responded to the state auditor's findings by including a few requirements for HCA in last year's supplemental budget:

• All Basic Health applicants must submit tax returns and recent pay history
• Employment Security Division (ESD) payroll records must be checked annually
• Enrollees with discrepancies in their ESD records must document income
• Enrollees with no ESD records must document their income twice each year
• HCA must pursue repayment and civil penalties

These requirements resulted in HCA re-screening 63,000 individuals on the Basic Health Plan last year, with nearly 20,000 being taken out of the program when eligibility could not be verified. 17,000 did not respond to requests for verification, 1,200 were dropped because their income was too high, and 1,400 dropped out voluntarily rather than provide documentation.

Accounts with documented overpayments are also being pursued and these efforts should be aggressive until the state has collected all repayments.

We commend the legislature and HCA for taking these important steps to remedy the problems identified by the state auditor and restore the trust of taxpayers.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org