JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri's social services agency has failed to publish a list of employers who have significant numbers of workers on Medicaid - a violation of both a state law and a gubernatorial order.
The department acknowledged that its first report on Medicaid in the workplace falls short of the law's requirements. But a spokeswoman said that because of the way it gathered its data, the agency would have violated a federal regulation had it named specific employers.
In 2006, Gov. Matt Blunt ordered the Department of Social Services to produce a quarterly report, beginning in the summer of 2008, of each employer with 50 or more employees or their families members receiving benefits from the government-run Medicaid health care program.
A 2007 state law ordered the same thing.
But the department's first report includes only general numbers. It states that 589 companies employ at least 50 people each who either receive Medicaid benefits themselves or have a spouse or child who does so. The report says that 9.4 percent of the work force for those companies were families on Medicaid.
But the report does not identify any of those companies by name, even though that was the first criteria listed in both the law and executive order.
The report is dated July 31 and was posted on the department's Web site without any publicity about it.
Asked about the report on Tuesday, a Blunt spokeswoman said it falls short of the governor's expectations.
"Clearly they have a lot of work to do on the report," said Blunt spokeswoman Jessica Robinson. "We would expect subsequent versions would have additional and greater details."
State Sen. Tim Green amended the reporting requirement to a 2007 bill that renamed Missouri's version of Medicaid as "MO HealthNet" and placed a greater emphasis on preventive health care.
Full Story: http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/08
/19/report-fails-identify-firms-workers-medicaid/
