February 19, 2025

The Health

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Medicaid Portal That Provides Federal Funding to States Stops Working, Officials Say

Medicaid Portal That Provides Federal Funding to States Stops Working, Officials Say

The online portal through which state Medicaid departments receive federal funding stopped working Tuesday, according to state officials. 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.”

States were still providing benefits to Medicaid patients, and paying doctors and hospitals for the medical care that they provide.

“We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent,” Ms. Leavitt said in a post on X.

Some states on Tuesday afternoon began to regain access to the portal, including Connecticut, according to Christine Stuart, a spokeswoman for the state’s Medicaid agency.

But state officials across the country on Tuesday said they were concerned that the portal would shut them out at the end of the week, since many states receive a large infusion of funds at the start of every month. Feb. 1 falls on Saturday. The freezing of the payment system created significant confusion among those officials over whether the programwould be affected by President Trump’s freeze on federal grants.

“A 24-hour delay may not have been a big problem, but if it’s extended, that creates a cash flow problem,” said Edwin Park, a Medicaid expert at Georgetown University. “States would not make their payments on time, or have to make partial payments. That could be highly disruptive.”

Medicaid is a behemoth in the safety net, providing health insurance to roughly a fifth of all Americans and making up roughly 10 percent of the federal budget. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly targeted the program for cuts, including with a proposal that would require program enrollees to work in order to receive benefits.

The portal used for federal payments to Medicaid programs had a red banner on it Tuesday warning that the system was taking “additional measures” that could cause delays because of “executive orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said that his staff “confirmed reports that Medicaid portals are down in all 50 states.” New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said her state had been locked out as well.

Federally-funded community health clinics, which that serve more than 32 million patients, many of them low-income, were also caught in the portal freeze. In addition to Medicaid, those clinics rely on so-called Section 330 grants to pay staff members and cover the health needs of patients. Funds are typically drawn by clinic workers multiple times a month.

Melissa Mather, a spokeswoman for Family Health Centers, a network of federally-sponsored clinics in Louisville, said that uncertainty around the portal had caused “chaos” in the clinics Tuesday, which she said had cash reserves to survive a brief pause in federal payments.

Around 90 percent of patients at federally-funded health clinics live in poverty, and roughly two-thirds have publicly-subsidized health insurance, such as Medicaid, according to Amy Simmons Farber, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Community Health Centers.

The Virginia Community Health Association on Tuesday surveyed its members, all federally-funded clinics, about how long they could stay open without grant money. One network of four clinics responded that it would likely have to close within the next two weeks, and another said it would need to lay off 17 staff members who did outreach to homeless populations and had salaries fully paid by federal grants, according to the association’s marketing manager, Joe Stevens.

Mattathias Schwartz and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

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