Medicaid seeks deficit appropriation, plus $167 M more next year

The Sun Herald, 9/26/7

The Division of Medicaid will ask Mississippi lawmakers in January for $56 million to keep the agency afloat until the current budget year ends next June.

Medicaid Executive Director Robert L. Robinson told the Joint Legislative Budget Committee on Wednesday that the deficit request is the difference between what the agency sought for this year and what lawmakers appropriated.

In addition, the agency is seeking $167.9 million more than its current budget to operate next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2008. That’s almost a 25 percent increase in state funding for the program.