Final FY 2015 FMAPs Result in Big Shifts for Some States

On September 30, 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released revised state personal income and per capita personal income data for 2012 as well as revisions for prior years. In addition to the annual revisions, this release reflects BEA’s comprehensive (or benchmark) revision of state personal income statistics, which is done periodically to incorporate new data, methodologies, and concepts, and can result in significant changes to the data for some states.

The federal government uses state per capita personal income to calculate each state’s reimbursement rate for Medicaid and other grant programs such as Title IV-E adoption assistance and foster care. This matching rate, calculated annually, is known as the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP). The BEA release allows calculation of the final fiscal year (FY) 2015 FMAPs, which are based on per capita personal incomes for calendar years 2010-2012.

This Issue Brief summarizes the BEA data and provides FFIS’s estimates of the final FY 2015 FMAPs. Based on the new data, 12 states will see shifts in their FMAP of greater than one percentage point (compared to seven states in FY 2014). Overall, 21 states will receive increased FMAPs in FY 2015 while 17 states will see decreases. This reverses the recent trend of more states seeing decreases than increases.  

Due to the federal shutdown, FFIS was unable to verify its calculations with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as is typically done before releasing the final FMAPs.