Nevadans getting Medicaid could nearly double in bill

The number of Nevada residents receiving care through Medicaid would nearly double by 2015 under provisions of a health care bill being developed in the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, according to the state Health Care Financing and Policy Division.

Just over 222,000 residents now get care through Medicaid. The total would increase by 217,000 under the national health care bill.

Division Administrator Charles Duarte told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in a Monday story that the state would be responsible for 13 percent to 18 percent of the cost of adding the new Medicaid recipients. It costs the state about $1.5 billion a year to provide Medicaid to Nevadans, $450 million of which is from state funds, he said.

But Jon Summers, a spokesman for U.S. Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Reid negotiated provisions into the current bill that prevent Nevada from having to absorb the added costs.

Duarte said he hasn't made any estimates but that the additional Medicaid costs could be considerable. Medicaid is the second most costly state government expenditure, after public education funding.

Duarte recently said he'll have to seek another $37 million from the state Legislature in 2011 because the current Medicaid enrollment is already 11,000 people more than the level for which it was funded in June.

He estimated as many as 75,000 Nevadans who qualify for Medicaid haven't enrolled in the program.

Nevada has some of the strictest requirements for Medicaid qualification in the country, said Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Ben Kieckhefer said.

He said the state's Medicaid qualification rules are so strict that unemployed people receiving benefits don't qualify because their compensation is too high.

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