EXPANDED MEDICAID enrollment numbers to undergo legislative audit.

The Division of Legislative Audit will conduct a special audit of the enrollment numbers for the state’s expanded Medicaid program, a legislative panel decided Thursday.

The Joint Legislative Auditing Committee’s executive committee authorized the audit, which was requested by committee co-chairman Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest.

King voted against legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year to authorize the use of federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for an estimated 250,000 poor Arkansans.

“This is not a witch hunt,” King told reporters after the meeting.

King requested the audit two days after the state Department of Human Services announced that it sent out notices to about 40,000 food stamp recipients informing them that they have been automatically assigned to a private health-insurance plan under the state’s expanded Medicaid program.

The automatic enrollments increased the number of people in the Medicaid program — for coverage that’s scheduled to start Jan. 1 — to 53,462. Of that number, 49,151 chose or were assigned to private plans, and 4,311 were assigned to the traditional Medicaid program because they were deemed to have exceptional health needs, according to the department.

Expansion of the Medicaid program, authorized by the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and approved by the state Legislature, extended eligibility for coverage to about 250,000

Arkansas adults that have incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level — $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.

State Rep. John Burris, R-Harrison, said in an interview that the special audit requested by King “seems to be theatrics.”

The information that King wants to audit has been widely disseminated and reported to the public, said Burris, who is chairman of the House Public Health and Welfare Committee and sponsored legislation authorizing the private option earlier this year.

A spokesman for Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, Matt DeCample, added: “Why would you take it to a level of an audit mere days after one round of numbers has been released, [and] there are going to be a lot more numbers released?”

But King replied that “the idea that it is theatrics is the most ridiculous thing I have heard.”

He said several lawmakers who have attended House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee meetings have raised questions that led him to seek this audit.

During the executive committee’s meeting earlier in the day, state Rep. Prissy Hickerson, R-Texarkana, also questioned the need for an audit.

King said the audit committee “is a fact-finding committee.”

“We have to rely on the agencies to present their side of their information and … we can look into what their actual numbers are and double-check them,” he said.

Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, asked whether the special audit would include people who have been automatically assigned to health-insurance plans.

King said that’s one of the questions being raised by lawmakers.

He said he has “a big issue” with people being automatically assigned because “you are getting off into letting a government agency or some people decide on a lot of dollars … being spent.”

King later told reporters that “the governor or none of the proponents of private option said anything about auto enrollment.”

But Burris said the automatic enrollment was widely known and talked about during legislative meetings over the summer.

DeCample said: “That’s not a state secret.”

Information about the automatic assignments was included in the waiver application that the state submitted to the federal government to get approval for the private option, said Amy Webb, a spokesman for the state Department of Human Services.

More than 40,000 people automatically assigned to private health-insurance plans Tuesday are among 145,000 recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamp program), who received letters from the state Department of Human Services in September saying that they would be eligible for coverage under the expanded program, the state Department of Human Services said Tuesday.

Those who responded and said they wanted coverage were sent notices giving them 12 days to visit a state website, insureark.org, where they would be asked to complete questionnaires designed to identify the medically frail. Applicants not found to be medically frail can then use the website to sign up for a plan.

The automatic assignments affect 38,376 people who indicated that they wanted coverage but did not visit the website; as well as 2,029 who completed the questionnaires but failed to select plans after it was determined that they were medically frail, according to the department.

The notices sent Tuesday give the recipients 30 days to switch plans if they choose. After that, the next opportunity to change plans will be in a year.

The assignments were made according to a formula designed to ensure a minimum market share for each of the four companies offering plans on the insurance exchange.

The minimum market share ranges from 33 percent to 20 percent, depending on the number of insurers serving each of seven regions of the state. After the minimum share was reached, the department made assignments evenly among the companies in the coverage regions.