The outage, which occurred just after the White House ordered a pause on federal grants, raised concerns that billions in Medicaid funding would be cut off.
WASHINGTON — The website that states use to get Medicaid payments from the federal government was down on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a social media post.
Leavitt, about an hour after finishing her first White House press briefing, said that states would still have their payments processed.
The outage, which occurred just after the White House ordered a pause on federal grants, raises concerns that billions in Medicaid funding would be cut off.
Leavitt said “no payments have been affected” and “the portal will be back online shortly.”
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said that the Medicaid reimbursement portals were down in all 50 states.
During her briefing, Leavitt said the White House freeze on federal aid wouldn’t affect people directly receiving aid; however, she was much less clear about what will happen to those who get indirect aid — through their states, other organizations or many other ways.
And while Leavitt said beneficiaries of programs like Social Security and Medicare would not be affected, she did not say Medicaid wouldn’t be affected.
Pressed on Medicaid payments being cut off to individuals, Leavitt said “I’ll check back on that.”
The White House subsequently said Medicaid wouldn’t be affected – even though it wasn’t specifically exempted from the White House directive.
The U.S. Health and Human Services agency doles out over a half trillion dollars to states in a joint partnership to run Medicaid, the nation’s health care coverage for about 80 million of the poorest of Americans, including millions of children.
