Sept. 11, 2009

MAPE delivers money-saving budget ideas to Chamber
MAPE Executive Director Jim Monroe delivered MAPE’s money-saving budget ideas to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s Issue Conference Friday at the Crowne Plaza in St. Paul. Also participating in the panel discussion were Tom Hanson, commissioner of Minnesota Management and Budget, and Sandra Vargas, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation.

Monroe informed Chamber members that the state budget deficit could be lowered by $357 million if the governor would implement MAPE’s money-saving budget suggestions today. That includes the approximately $240 million per biennium that the state writes off, bloated management that costs approximately $110 million per biennium and $6.8 million that the state spends on outside electrical contractors.

To further underscore the importance of MAPE’s case, the Associated Press reported last week that the Minnesota Department of Human Services has spent more than $30 million on the now-failed HealthMatch system. The new system was intended to improve the state agency’s method for processing health insurance applications.
Six years, millions of dollars in cost over-runs and “thousands of defects” later, Human Services fired the outside contractor. The state is now defending itself against a lawsuit by the outside contractor.

HealthMatch was born in 2002, according to the Associated Press. The state hired SSi North America Inc. a year later with a completion goal of less than two years. That deadline was blown, and the contract was expanded and extended twice in 2005, with the completion date pushed back to mid-2008. SSi became Albion Inc., then ACS acquired Albion. Associated Press added that a subcontractor with expertise in Medicaid rules dropped out, and three project managers and five deputies cycled through HealthMatch in four years. Meanwhile, Human Services still does not have an electronic way to catch eligibility errors – costing the state millions.

For more on this story, please go to the Minnesota Public Radio website: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/09/03/health-match-failed-program/