Help for badly disabled Nevadans still pending

Brendan Riley

Friday, March 17, 2000 | 12:22 p.m.

CARSON CITY - More than nine months after the state approved $1 million to help severely disabled Nevadans, the program has yet to deliver any assistance.

But a state official says she expects a federal agency to approve the long-delayed program soon.

The endorsement from the federal Health Care Financing Administration, which is two months into its review, is needed because a combination of state and federal Medicaid funds will be used.

Lawmakers last May approved $1 million to help 30 people this fiscal year, and another 30 next fiscal year. But the current fiscal year is three-quarters over, and the promised assistance still hasn't materialized.

"I think everything looks good," Janice Wright, head of the state Division of Health Care Financing and Policy, said Thursday. "I have no concerns about HCFA being able to officially approve this soon."

Wright, who was blamed earlier by some disabled advocates for delays in filing paperwork for the program, added that a waiver expansion request of the sort submitted to HCFA normally takes no more than three months, and the request was filed in mid-January.

She also said money authorized for the program this fiscal year can be rolled over to the next fiscal year and won't be reverted simply because it wasn't spent within the scheduled time frame.

About 165 severely disabled Nevadans benefit from a waiver that lets them earn from $500 to $1,500 a month without being cut off from Medicaid benefits that help them avoid institutions or other highly restrictive living arrangements.

The delays in expanding the program prompted the Legislature's interim subcommittee on health care to send Gov. Kenny Guinn a letter at the start of the year urging action.

Controversy over the waiver predates the 1999 legislative session: Lawmakers in 1997 had approved another type of waiver and had allotted $500,000 for it. But nothing was done and the money reverted last year.

Wright's agency and the state Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation had been charged with completing the earlier waiver application but didn't get the job done, lawmakers were told.

The Legislature also was told that Nevada spends less money than any other state to keep its residents out of nursing homes.

Researchers said Nevada ranked at or near the bottom in overall Medicaid money spent on alternatives to institutional care, long-term care spending and home and community-based services.