Minnesota Finds Reinstating Medicaid Benefits to Those ‘Incorrectly Dropped’ is ‘Slow Going’

State officials in Minnesota are working to restore Medicaid benefits to about 22,000 welfare beneficiaries who "incorrectly" lost their insurance benefits due to a computer problem, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports. The state's computer system -- which was not reprogrammed to account for the 1996 change in welfare law that delinked welfare and Medicaid -- dropped the Medicaid beneficiaries even though the law reform allowed individuals leaving welfare to receive one year of "transitional" Medicaid benefits. Since federal officials notified the state in April 2000 that people were being improperly dropped from Medical Assistance, the state's Medicaid program, state officials have been working to re-enroll and reimburse beneficiaries for expenses incurred while they were dropped from the program. While the state in February sent notices to all Medicaid-eligible individuals to encourage them to re-enroll and made legal services available to ensure that medical bills are paid, only 1,700 of the 22,000 dropped beneficiaries have been reinstated into the program (Hopfensperger, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 5/4).