The online portal through which state Medicaid departments receive federal funding stopped working Tuesday, according to state officials who rely on that system to funnel payments to millions of patients nationwide. The outage at least temporarily jeopardized payments the federal government legally owes Medicaid programs, which serve tens of millions of low-income Americans and cover the cost of treating those patients in hospitals and clinics.
A memo from the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday said that the Medicaid program would “continue without pause,” and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that the White House was “aware” of the outage and was working to have it “back online shortly.”
“We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent,” Ms. Leavitt said in a post on X.
But the freezing of the payment system created confusion in state Medicaid offices across the country over whether the program, which more than 70 million Americans rely on for health insurance, would be affected by President Trump’s freeze on federal grants.
The portal used for federal reimbursements, Payment Management Services, had a red banner on it Tuesday afternoon warning that the system was taking “additional measures” that could cause delays because of “executive orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments.”
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Tuesday that his staff “confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states.” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois told The Chicago Sun-Times that his state Medicaid program was affected by the freeze. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said her state had been locked out as well.
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in an interview that his state’s portal with the federal government for Medi-Cal, as the program is known there, had stopped working as of Tuesday morning. “Our liaising to and connection with federal funding is turned off,” Mr. Bonta said.
States are still providing benefits to Medicaid patients, and continuing to pay doctors and hospitals for the medical care that they provide. But state officials said they were concerned that the portal might not be back up by the end of the week, because many states receive a large infusion of funds at the start of every month. Feb. 1 falls on Saturday.
Clinics that serve low-income patients were also unable to access their federal funds on Tuesday. They rely on the same portal as the Medicaid departments to access their grant dollars.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.
Medicaid provides health insurance to roughly a fifth of all Americans, and makes up about 10 percent of the federal budget. Republicans in Congress have recently discussed major cuts to the program, including requiring Medicaid enrollees to work in order to receive benefits.
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