Ind. questions whether CMS can protect expansion data

Indiana missed a deadline to share information with the CMS about how its Medicaid expansion has affected access to care. Republican Gov. Mike Pence’s administration said it didn’t trust that the agency could protect the data.

The missed deadline is the latest in a back-and-forth between the state and the federal agency, which is trying to gauge the impact of Indiana’s conservative approach to expansion, which includes different levels of coverage and requires beneficiaries to make payments into health savings accounts.

Pence’s insurance and health policy director, Tyler Ann McGuffee, wrote to the CMS earlier this month saying she had never received a response from the CMS after inquiring about security measures taken by the agency’s vendors.

In April, the CMS was granted approval to examine whether Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0 has hurt beneficiaries’ access to care. The CMS set a deadline of June 17 for the state to come to terms on a data-use agreement.

Indiana officials “outlined several concerns about providing personal health information to the CMS vendors that we have no contractual or legal relationship to,” McGuffee says in the letter. “While we understand your timeline ... we cannot short-change the state’s review process as this could put our citizens’ personal health information at risk and potentially create liabilities for the state.”