HELENA – The state has a backlog of applications for the new children’s health insurance program, and officials are holding off on a planned statewide advertising blitz for it.
The new Healthy Montana Kids program expands Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Plan with the goal of adding 29,000 children in low- and moderate-income families.
More than 2,300 families have applied for the program for the first time since September and another 6,000 have applied for Medicaid and other benefits in October and November. Only 740 children have been added to the program.
State officials had hoped to process applications within a month, but a new computer program, a process that requires income documentation for some families and the crunch of new applications has created a backlog.
The state also needs to hire people for eight new positions to help determine eligibility. Those posts should be filled soon, the department said. The Legislature directed the department to be conservative in hiring extra people to administer the expansion.
But “now we’re recognizing that we should have hired more upfront,” said Anna Whiting Sorrell, director of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Whiting Sorrell said people should still apply for coverage, because families found to be eligible will have coverage dating back to the first day of the month that they applied.
Once the state processes the still-pending Healthy Montana Kids and Medicaid applications received through November, as many as 4,000 additional children may have health coverage.
One of the new requirements of Healthy Montana Kids is that families must show proof of their income level, while the old program let people “self-declare” their income.
Mary Dalton, department’s Medicaid and health services manager, said launching the new program has been difficult because it offers coverage under two separate programs that have their own rules and funding. “This whole melding is going to be an interesting process for the next couple of years,” she said.