Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — In a brief statement, the American Samoa Medicaid State Agency announced that it received notice yesterday of its fiscal year 2023 — which began Oct. 01, 2022 — federal grant award for $89.21 million, for medical care services.

According to the Medicaid office, the current Federal Matching Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for American Samoa is approximately 68% and this means that in order to fully draw the $89 million, the American Samoa Government must provide approximately $45 million in local matching funds.

However, under ASG’s financial plan for FY 2023, Medicaid was appropriated only $3 million for local match funding.

For FY2022, due to the lack of matching funds and limited medical services available, the Medicaid office anticipates returning about $37 million back to the U.S Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) after it closes out its FY2022 accounts, according to the statement.

"Due to the limits on our local match, we must innovate to expand services within the context of the local match and compliance with eligibility rules. We hope to make some important announcements about coverage expansion in the next few weeks,” said ASG Medicaid director Sandra King Young in the statement.

As previously reported by Samoa News, the lack of local matching funds for the CMS annual allocation to the local Medicaid office has resulted in the return of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds back to CMS in the last two years, according to the ASG Medicaid Office summary of the agency’s financial report presented to the Fono last month.

“Due to the limited local match, Medicaid returned back to CMS” — $55 million in FY 2020; $42 million in FY 2021 and an “anticipated” $37 million for FY 2022, which officially ended on Sept. 30, 2022, according to the summary report. (See Samoa News edition Sept. 14 for details.)