General Discussion

The online portal through which state Medicaid departments receive federal funding stopped working Tuesday, according to state officials who rely on that system to funnel payments to millions of patients nationwide. The outage at least temporarily jeopardized payments the federal government legally owes Medicaid programs, which serve tens of millions of low-income Americans and cover the cost of treating those patients in hospitals and clinics.

A memo from the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday said that the Medicaid program would “continue without pause,” and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that the White House was “aware” of the outage and was working to have it “back online shortly.”