(Des Moines) Iowa House District 21 Representative Tom Moore said the Iowa House this week passed two significant budget bills.
The Health and Human Services budget appropriates a total of $2.101 billion from the General Fund to the Department on Aging, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Iowa Veterans Home. This is an increase of $53.58 million when compared to the estimated budget for FY2022.
Moore noted that throughout the public health emergency, the state received an additional 6.2-percent Federal Medical Assistance Percentage ($72 million each quarter). This has caused there to be a significant carry forward in Medicaid, with an estimated carry forward of $257.9 million going into FY 2023 and $160.8 million going into FY 2024.
Other significant changes include an increase of $7.4 million to be used to reduce the waiting list for the intellectual disability HCBS waiver; an increase of $4 million to create a new home health rate structure that provides an incentive for providing care to rural Medicaid members; and an increase of $3 million to behavioral health intervention services; just to name a few of the changes.
Pertaining to mental health funding, the General Fund assumes $71 million of property tax levy dollars, which zeroes out the property tax levy dollars and the state now will use General Fund money for all mental heath funding. The bill also merges the Department of Public Health and the Department of Human Service to form a single department of Health and Human Services.
The Iowa House also passed the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund Budget; we’ll have more on that tomorrow.
