Nebraska Algorithm Cuts Medicaid Funding for Nearly 900 Disabled Residents, Slashing Some Care by $220,000
Updated
Updated · NBC News · Sep 8
Nebraska Algorithm Cuts Medicaid Funding for Nearly 900 Disabled Residents, Slashing Some Care by $220,000
2 articles · Updated · NBC News · Sep 8
Summary
Nebraska has cut Medicaid funding for nearly 900 people with developmental disabilities since adopting the interRAI assessment tool last year, according to an NBC News report.
More than $220,000 a year was stripped from the combined support for brothers David, 47, and John Michael, 45, whose family had built a nonprofit care plan to keep them at home.
Families say the secretive system contains glaring assessment errors, drives reductions so deep that safety is at risk, and feeds an appeals process they describe as effectively rubber-stamping the algorithm’s decisions.
State officials defend interRAI as a standardized method that makes funding decisions fairer and more consistent, but the cuts are intensifying scrutiny of how algorithmic tools shape disability care.