Oregon Health Authority officials told a legislative committee Tuesday that the agency might have provided Medicaid benefits to some 32,000 people who no longer qualified for them.

If historical trends hold true, as the state processes a backlog of 115,000 Medicaid renewals, 28 percent of them could be deemed ineligible because they make too much money. But Lynne Saxton, director of the health authority, flatly rejected the idea that the lingering questions about the state's Medicaid rolls pose a financial risk for the state.

The questions come just as state lawmakers consider a new tax on health care providers. At the federal level, the Trump administration continues to push for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the sweeping Medicaid changes that came with it.

Medicaid enrollment expands and contracts along with people's income. The health authority, required by law to "redetermine" eligibility for all Oregon enrollees once a year, fell behind processing Medicaid renewals due in large part to protracted data processing problems. The technology failures, coupled with the addition of 400,000 new people to the Medicaid rolls after the Affordable Care Act liberalized eligibility standards, has posed a three-year managerial challenge.

"This has been long and hard," Saxton said. "I think everyone is ready for it to be over."

State officials have kept their federal counterparts in the loop about the challenges and have received several waivers from normal tracking requirements, Saxton said.

The agency declined to estimate how much money the state and federal governments might have paid to cover the estimated 32,000 non-qualifiers or over what period of time. But given the $430 a month average monthly benefit, 32,000 people could have cost as much as $165 million in a year.

Health authority officials rejected that computation.

The law requires that Medicaid eligibility be redetermined once a year. It doesn't require the state to claw back any money paid between eligibility screenings.

More than a million Oregonians have incomes low enough to qualify for Medicaid. To qualify, individuals cannot make more than $16,643 a year, and families of four can earn no more than $33,948.

The health authority has successfully redetermined eligibility for more than 730,000 Medicaid participants. Another 115,000 are in the process or have yet to begin, Saxton said. More than 14,000 of those 115,000 have not responded to requests for financial information and are being terminated. Another 17,000 applications are being processed.

The agency must launch redeterminations for another 84,000 participants.

On Tuesday, Gov. Kate Brown announced she will require the Health Authority to provide her with weekly updates on its progress cleaning up the Medicaid eligibility problems. The governor also set an Aug. 31 deadline for the agency to finish doing checks on people whose Medicaid eligibility is unclear.

The agency plans to complete its analysis of the redetermination backlog by the end of this month.

Brown suggested that critics of the state's handling of Medicaid eligibility checks should remember the importance of the program to low-income Oregonians.

"We've heard a lot about Medicaid eligibility over the last week, but we haven't heard much about the lives that depend on it," Brown said in a statement. "These are Oregonians who cannot afford the health care they need in order to pursue healthy and productive lives. Some are seeking preventive care, while others are battling life-threatening conditions."

In an apparent dig at Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, who issued a preliminary "audit alert" last week calling attention to the backlog of Medicaid redeterminations, Brown said she "will not play games with people's health care in order to score a few political points.

"There is too much at stake for Oregon families who need access to critical health care services."

Brown described the remaining enrollees the Health Authority has yet to check as "some of the most important" cases. However, it's not completely clear who these people are. Bryan Hockaday, a spokesman for Brown, said some of them might be eligible due to breast or cervical cancer or pregnancy.

Sen. Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, was one of several Democratic lawmakers who blasted Richardson, a Republican, for going public last Thursday with what he called "potentially misleading" findings of the audit alert.

The audit alert said ineligible Oregonians could be wrongfully collecting as much as $37 million a month.

On Tuesday, Rayfield asked Saxton, "Is there a reason we should be concerned about our exposure going forward?"

"No," she replied.

-- Jeff Manning and Hillary Borrud