A nationwide lockout of federal health payment systems, reportedly due to an “outage”, has led to widespread criticism of the White House. The lockout affected several organizations and agencies, including state Medicaid programs, federally funded Head Start early education programs, and community health centers.
What Happened: The White House attributed the lockout to an “outage.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that the administration is “aware” of the Medicaid website not functioning.
“We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent,” said Leavitt.
The lockout prevented multiple state Medicaid programs from accessing their payment systems. However, operations resumed later the same day, according to a CBS News report. The incident coincided with President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to freeze spending across the federal government, leading to heightened criticism from state governments, nonprofits, and lawmakers.
The entities affected were unable to access the Payment Management Services web portal, run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which processes billions of dollars in payments annually.
The lockout and the ongoing communication “pause” imposed by the Trump administration at HHS led to a flurry of requests for comment from various stakeholders, including the National Association of Medicaid Directors and several lawmakers.
Why It Matters: The lockout occurred amidst the administration’s decision to freeze spending across the federal government, a move that has been challenged legally. A federal judge issued a temporary stay on the funding freeze, halting the move until further arguments can be heard.
The freeze put $3 trillion in funding under scrutiny. This directive required all federal agencies to halt disbursements while programs were reviewed for alignment with Trump’s policy priorities.
The move is expected to hit sectors such as healthcare, education, clean energy and others. Stocks of clean energy companies like Sunnova Energy International Inc. NOVA. and Sunrun Inc. RUN suffered a downturn. Shares of healthcare-sector firms like Universal Health Services Inc. UHS and Tenet Healthcare Corp. THC also were in the red on Tuesday.
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Shivdeep Dhaliwal
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