Issue Brief 9-47
December 1, 2009
Summary 

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA; P.L. 111-5) contains provisions that increase Medicaid grants to states for 27 months by increasing their federal medical assistance percentages (FMAPs), the share of state programs paid by the federal government. The bonus increases can change each quarter based on state unemployment rates. The preliminary quarterly unemployment bonuses are calculated when preliminary unemployment data for the month prior to the start of the quarter are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Those quarterly FMAPs are recalculated once final unemployment data for the month are available. On November 20, 2009, BLS published final state unemployment data for September 2009. Publication of this data permits the calculation of the final first quarter ARRA FMAPs for federal fiscal year (FY) 2010. Although the updated September data were used in the calculation, the final FMAPs remain the same as the preliminary ones that FFIS reported in Issue Brief 09-39.