The Joint Health and Human Services Committee held its annual SMART Act hearing, receiving presentations from eight agencies and audit offices covering Medicaid fraud accountability, behavioral health funding, insurance parity enforcement, child protection oversight, and public health priorities; no legislation was voted on, but sharp exchanges between committee members and agency heads over transparency, cost-benefit of climate regulations, and duplicative state services signaled major debates ahead for the legislative session.
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Representative Grand Bradley challenged whether continuing to extend HCPF's implementation deadlines is acceptable given $25 million in alleged Medicaid losses from a rider scheme, asking 'Do we just allow continuances even when there's $25 million that we know of right now in Medicaid fraud?' Jenny Page of the State Auditor's Office responded that the department sets its own implementation dates and 'the auditor's office cannot set the dates for them,' and confirmed the auditor's office has been informing HCPF of issues since 2021.
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“Do we just allow continuances even when there's $25 million that we know of right now in Medicaid fraud?”
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Sign in to subscribeThe Joint Health and Human Services Committee will come to order. Mr. Shadoon, please call the roll. Representatives and Senators Barone. Present. Bradfield. Bradley. Good morning. Wright. Here. Arson. Present. Cutter. Present. Daugherty. Excused. English. Excused. Fray. Excused. Frazal. Excused. Hamrick. Excused. Judah. Here. Johnson. Here. Leader. Excused. McCormick. Here. Michael. Syngene. Present. Wright. In. Excused. Stewart. Here. Wiseman. Excused. Woog. Excused. Gilchrist. Present. Mr. Chair. Here. Members, welcome to the 2026 Joint Health Committee for our SMART ACT hearing. Let the record reflect Representative Hamrick has joined us. Members, we do have two days worth of presentations. We will try to be as efficient as possible. I want we have communicated with the departments to allow for adequate time for questions from the committee. And so putting that on the record to the departments to please make sure that with your presentations that they do not take up the entire time and that there's adequate time for members to answer questions. Obviously, there's a number of legislators in the room today, and so we will try to make sure everyone has the ability to ask questions and get those answers that they're looking for and making sure that everyone…
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