JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Jay Nixon today signed Senate Bill 210, which extends Missouri’s Federal Reimbursement Allowance program. The Reimbursement Allowance Program, first signed into law by former Governor John Ashcroft in 1992, allows the state to draw down additional federal dollars to fund health care for low-income families, children, seniors and Missourians with disabilities.
“This bill passed with overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, and I’m pleased that the General Assembly was able to work in a bipartisan way to get this needed legislation to my desk,” Gov. Nixon. “Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act for a second time and the legislature has acknowledged the importance of drawing down federal dollars to fund our Medicaid program, I urge them to take the next step and bring Missourians’ tax dollars home to strengthen and reform Medicaid.”
Under the Reimbursement Allowance program, health care providers pay an assessment to the state, which uses these revenues to earn federal matching dollars to fund the state’s Medicaid program. The revenue from the assessments and federal matching dollars are used to make payments for hospital, nursing home, ambulance, pharmacy, and intermediate care facility services for seniors, people with disabilities and low-income children and their families. The revenue from the provider assessments allows the state to spend less general revenue for these Medicaid services, allowing additional general revenue to be focused on high priorities like education.
Since the hospital provider assessment was originally enacted in 1992, four additional provider assessments have been added: nursing homes in 1995, pharmacies in 2002, intermediate care facilities in 2009 and ambulances in 2011. The state statues that authorize the program include sunsets so the provider assessments can be periodically reviewed.
