Medicaid Reform – Florida

Posted on May 12, 2011 by townsend

• Fla. pilot program to cut Medicaid costs raises new questions, By N.C. Aizenman, May 11, 2011, Washington Post: “To visit the low-rise medical offices dotting the sun-bleached highways of Broward County is to meet doctors and patients who complain of being guinea pigs in a social experiment gone wrong. They are part of a five-year pilot program designed to test whether Florida can reduce spending on Medicaid, the public insurance program for the poor and disabled, by largely turning the program over to for-profit HMOs. Success would mean getting a handle on one of the fastest-growing and most vexing expenditures confronting states. But it’s unclear whether the pilot, which is also underway in four other counties, has achieved that. Health professionals here say any savings have come at a high cost: the quality of care. And they are outraged over the legislature’s decision last week to essentially expand the pilot statewide, which will be carefully watched by other financially strapped states across the nation…”
• Fla. Medicaid overhaul’s 1st enrollees: disabled, By Carol Gentry, May 12, 2011, Miami Herald: “The first Florida Medicaid patients required to join managed-care plans under the just-approved overhaul won’t be the strong and healthy. The first wave will be made up of frail elders and the disabled. Until now, Florida’s plans to transfer Medicaid patients into managed care have focused on children and families, not the sick and frail elderly who need constant care. The assumption was that health maintenance organizations’ complicated rules would trip up weak, confused elders. But that thinking has changed. In the Medicaid overhaul that the Legislature passed and Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign, the elderly and disabled would be the first group required to enroll in managed care. If federal health officials approve the plan, in July 2012 the state will officially begin lining up HMOs and provider-service networks to take on the population beginning in October 2013…”