Medicaid launches one-on-one'
drug coverage enrollment campaign

By Staff
from staff reports
August 11, 2004
JACKSON State Medicaid officials on Tuesday launched an ambitious campaign to sign up thousands of recipients for a Medicaid Drug Discount Card and access to free and discounted drug programs.
Officials are using telephones and a new computer analysis to contact recipients as part of a comprehensive communications effort to help poverty level aged and disabled beneficiaries ease their transition to Medicare.
Even before the most recent effort began, Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday that 14,000 of 47,000 PLAD recipients had already been contacted. He's hoping this intensified program will reach the rest.
The Division of Medicaid received specially-designed computer data that matches PLAD beneficiaries with the alternative health care coverage that best meets their prescription drug needs, Barbour said.
The program eliminates the time-consuming research process many beneficiaries have to go through to get matched to the right coverage. In the last two weeks the Division of Medicaid contacted 14,000 PLAD recipients. That contact rate is expected to increase with the new program data.
Medicaid experts will walk recipients through the application process and send them the forms, ready for a signature. In some cases, the recipients also may need to get a doctor's signature.
Barbour said the launch of the new effort is one of the reasons why he extended the transition deadline to Sept. 15.
have a coverage gap, but an information gap and this approach is eliminating that gap," he said.
The Legislature passed Medicaid reform legislation to keep the cash-strapped Medicaid program sustainable by saving millions of dollars in moving PLAD recipients to the federal Medicare program.