State Medicaid Programs

Posted on July 6, 2011 by townsend

• Medicaid payments go under the knife, By Phil Galewitz, July 5, 2011, USA Today: “To curb rising Medicaid costs, about a dozen states are starting a new budget year by reducing payments to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers that treat the poor. Some health care experts say the cuts, most of which went into effect July 1 or will later this month, could add to a shortage of physicians and other providers participating in Medicaid. ‘Further depressing payment rates can only worsen the situation,’ says Sara Rosenbaum, chair of the health policy department at George Washington University. She says some states cutting rates – such as South Carolina- already have severe Medicaid physician shortages. Insurers and employers have their own concerns about the payment cuts. They say trimming the rates will prompt providers to raise their prices for patients who have private insurance…”
• Latest S.C. Medicaid cuts raise access fears, By Phil Galewitz, July 5, 2011, USA Today: “Medicaid patients in Spartanburg, S.C., face long odds in finding a new doctor. Most specialists in the city don’t see Medicaid patients, and primary care physicians generally will see only one new Medicaid patient a month, says Fran Kunda, a Spartanburg family doctor and chairwoman of the South Carolina Academy of Family Physicians. As the latest round of Medicaid cuts on doctors goes into effect Friday, Kunda fears access problems will only worsen in Spartanburg and other parts of the state. South Carolina, which reduced reimbursement rates to all Medicaid providers by 3% in April, is imposing an additional 2% cut on all doctors except obstetricians and neonatologists. It is one of nearly a dozen states that have opted to cut the Medicaid rates this month to doctors, hospitals and other providers to help limit spending in the federal-state health program for low-income and disabled residents…”
• Doctors shun Medicaid, By Kristen Consillio, July 5, 2011, Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “Hawaii’s chance to get a handle on the number of publicly insured residents denied access to primary care slipped away last week when the Obama administration shelved a plan for a mystery shopper program to measure access to medical services. A common complaint among patients covered by government health plans such as Medicaid is the difficulty in finding primary care doctors willing to accept public insurance, though there is no hard evidence to gauge the scope of the problem. The mystery shopper program, scrapped after doctors and politicians criticized it as government snooping, would have measured the level of access for patients insured in a public program versus higher-paying private insurance offered by companies such as Hawaii Medical Service Association. Local health care providers had hoped the short-lived proposal to survey difficulties in accessing care here and in eight other states – through people posing as patients with different kinds of insurance coverage seeking primary-care appointments – would have prompted government action, making it less burdensome for doctors to accept publicly insured patients…”