On August 31st, 2022, Paragon President Brian Blase was quoted in The Wall Street Journal for their story “Medicaid Proposed Rule Aims to Ease the Enrollment Process.”
The story says:
The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed a rule to overhaul Medicaid’s enrollment processes, aimed at establishing more consistency across state programs, while making it easier for beneficiaries to get and retain health coverage.
The changes would standardize Medicaid’s eligibility and enrollment policies, and include limiting the requirement that individuals’ renew benefit eligibility to once every 12 months. The renewal process isn’t currently uniform across all states.
Brian was quoted in the story to explain that this proposed rule challenges to overall viability of Medicaid.
“The biggest problem: a huge number of people enrolled in Medicaid are not eligible, depriving resources from the truly needy,” said Brian Blase, president of Paragon Health Institute, which analyzes government health programs and policies. Mr. Blase helped direct former President Donald Trump’s health policy agenda. Mr. Blase has said many beneficiaries are ineligible because they earn too much, and some also aren’t lawfully present in the U.S.
“The Biden administration should focus on reducing the massive waste, fraud, abuse, and misspending in Medicaid, and limiting eligibility reviews is counterproductive to that goal,” he said.