Selig: Resignation ‘My Idea,’ Need ‘New Energy’ At Arkansas DHS

John Selig, the director of the state’s Department of Human Services, said Friday that his resignation from the post he has held for 10 years was voluntary. His announced resignation followed a detailed report that raised questions about the integrity of Arkansas’ Medicaid system.

“It was my idea,” he said in an interview with journalist Steve Barnes on the AETN show “Arkansas Week.”

Selig, 55, resigned from his post last Thursday after working with the department a total of 25 years. He said that before Gov. Asa Hutchinson entered office, “We didn’t know each other. We had had one breakfast when he became governor, and he asked me to stay on for a while, and actually we’ve just had a great working relationship. But in July of this year, I hit my 10th year as director and really started to think, ‘OK, it’s probably time for a change in this agency to bring some new energy, so I started thinking about it at that point, and then we visited earlier this week.”

Appearing on this week’s edition of Talk Business & Politics, Hutchinson said he’ll turn first to the private business sector to replace Selig, who will leave his job at the end of the year.

“I’m going to look in the private sector for people with business backgrounds,” Hutchinson said. “The most important thing about a new director of DHS is that they understand business process, they understand managing people [and] very technical IT projects. So it’s a management experience I’m looking for. It would be a bonus if they had a background in children’s services or youth services and Medicaid. But most importantly, we need someone who understands business management practices.”

Hutchinson indicated he’d look in Arkansas first but wouldn’t preclude a national search.

Selig has faced scrutiny from legislators, particularly regarding the state’s difficulties in transitioning to a new Medicaid enrollment system whose price tag has ballooned to $200 million, more than twice the original expectation.

On Wednesday, The Stephen Group, a consultant hired by the Health Care Reform Legislative Task Force, reported that a LexisNexis search revealed that almost 43,000 enrollees in the state’s Medicaid and private option programs have best addresses that are not in Arkansas.

Medicaid is the government program managed by DHS that serves lower-income residents, the disabled, and seniors living in nursing homes. The private option program uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for Arkansans earning up to 138% of the federal poverty line.

The private option has been controversial since it was created in 2013. The Health Care Reform Legislative Task Force is considering alternatives, while Hutchinson earlier this year proposed seven major changes. Selig noted in the interview that The Stephen Group recommended a number of changes but did not endorse ending coverage.

“The task force that the Legislature created to look at this issue and look at reforming Medicaid really was, as I understand it, evenly split between people who had supported the private option and those who had voted against it,” he said. “And then the consultant they hired has now come out and said, you know, it really does make sense not to keep the private option but to keep these people covered in some way. And the governor had put out just as a draft for people to shoot at, as he said, kind of some of his ideas, kind of a seven-point plan, and the consultants came back and said, we like five of those points, so there seems to be a lot of common ground, and I was encouraged.”