Medicaid funding<\/a> disbursed through Florida’s Children’s Medical Services program. On Oct. 1, the state appointed Molina Healthcare as the new administrator responsible for distributing funds to Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) providers.<\/p>\nHer agency reports that most of its claims have remained unprocessed since the switch of administrators. Demanding answers, Perez recently joined fellow providers to rally outside Molina’s Doral office.<\/p>\n
“If we don’t receive any payment, how long can I be working without payment? I try because I know they need me. He needs me,” Perez said.<\/p>\n
Medical attorney Henry Marines said Perez’s situation is far from isolated.<\/p>\n
“I have almost 700 providers that we communicate with, and they all say the same thing. They haven’t been paid,” Marines said.<\/p>\n
Marines expressed confusion over the payment backlog, noting that Molina should have received the state funding allocated for each recipient at the start of the month.<\/p>\n
“They already know beforehand exactly how many recipients or how many members they are gonna receive under the CMS,” Marines said.<\/p>\n
Molina Healthcare has not responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration confirmed state oversight is underway.<\/p>\n
“The Agency is actively investigating payment concerns raised by ABA providers regarding the October 1 transition of services to Molina,” the AHCA spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The payment delay has left parents anxious about potential disruptions to their children’s care. Isaiah’s mother, Joyce Jackson, fears the unpaid claims could force her son’s provider out of business.<\/p>\n
“It’s gonna be hard to meet a new person and get used to that new person,” Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Marines indicated it is likely too early to take legal action over the claims, but he plans to meet with senior executive leadership at Molina soon to seek a resolution.<\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Registered behavioral technician Arlene Perez has spent the past five years providing daily support to 12-year-old Isaiah, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13709,7071,14180,28,30,29,571,7931,13120,807],"class_list":["post-436380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-autism","tag-children","tag-doral","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-medicaid","tag-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}