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Iowa Medicaid is Burning

jonny5 said:
Debate forum.
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I think you will find that your position on this is unconscionable to the vast, vast majority of people regardless of their political leanings.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
I think you will find that your position on this is unconscionable to the vast, vast majority of people regardless of their political leanings.
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So they should come in here and change my mind or at least defend their argument. See above about how this is a DEBATE FORUM.
 
jonny5 said:
So they should come in here and change my mind or at least defend their argument. See above about how this is a DEBATE FORUM.
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If the thought of someone dying a horrible death from cancer simply because they don't have the money to pay for treatment does not sway you, then I don't know what would.
 
danielpalos said:
A right wing, red State. Coincidence?
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Iowa's Medicaid program used to be a model. They had a very effective PCCM program that got services to the people who needed them. The transition to managed care (privatization) doesn't appear to have been well thought out and certainly not well-executed. Which is a shame.
 
Republicans in 'Merca, guided by Satan Trump, have made health care all about money; under the GOP plan you will be, "taken care of" as Trump said during the campaign.

What this means is, if you are sick & dying & you cannot afford insurance, then DIE bitch, die.

Great plan; the GOP way .............. lovely ...........
 
Greenbeard said:
Iowa's Medicaid program used to be a model. They had a very effective PCCM program that got services to the people who needed them. The transition to managed care (privatization) doesn't appear to have been well thought out and certainly not well-executed. Which is a shame.
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Interesting point. Why does the right wing believe we should cut general welfare spending and not general warfare spending?
 
cuban smokes said:
Republicans in 'Merca, guided by Satan Trump, have made health care all about money; under the GOP plan you will be, "taken care of" as Trump said during the campaign.

What this means is, if you are sick & dying & you cannot afford insurance, then DIE bitch, die.

Great plan; the GOP way .............. lovely ...........
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Puerto Rico is a US territory. A corp of engineers should be upgrading the infrastructure on the entire island.
 
A look in on how things are going:

Down from three insurers to two, but the departed insurer still has some unpaid bills.

A private Medicaid company that pulled out of Iowa has yet to pay thousands of medical bills
A Medicaid company that terminated its Iowa contract almost a year ago has yet to pay as much as $14.6 million for medical care provided to disabled, poor and elderly Iowans, a Des Moines Register investigation shows.
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The two remaining are getting 8%+ raises to keep them in.

Iowa agrees to give Medicaid management firms 7.5% raise to continue running program
Iowa has agreed to give 7.5 percent more state money to the two private companies managing its $5 billion Medicaid program, officials announced Friday.

The agreement will keep UnitedHealthcare and Amerigroup in Iowa, but it will mean state leaders must come up with about $103 million more than last fiscal year.

The new agreements cover the current fiscal year, which began July 1. The increase in state spending is more than double the 3.3 percent increase the state agreed to for last fiscal year.

Overall, the new contracts will give the two companies raises of 8.4 percent in state and federal money, totaling $344 million.
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And the overall savings estimates continue to be a bit fishy.

Mysterious Savings: Health Providers Question Iowa's Medicaid Claim
In May, Mike Randol, Iowa’s Medicaid director, told legislators that the state had saved $141 million just this year through privatization. That was a lot less than the $238 million that then-Gov. Terry Branstad promised when he ordered the change back in 2015. Still, it was a lot more than earlier estimates of actual savings. . .

Randol initially offered no explanation as to why the savings estimate had jumped from $47 million to $141 million in just a few months. He later said that the picture changed when he looked at the system as a whole, rather than individual programs and services. The state Department of Human Services (DHS) subsequently released details about its methodology, but legislators expressed some puzzlement and asked the state auditor to look into the disparity.
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But a number of health providers in the state have complained that the numbers are a little fishy. They say the savings have resulted in part from delayed compensation to them, or complete nonpayment for legitimate treatments. They contend, among other things, that a change in the coding of procedures means valid services that aren’t on the new list aren’t being paid for. In short, providers say, they’re getting stiffed. “The claims about savings were not a savings in services, but the fact that the Medicaid managed care companies simply weren’t paying the bills,” says Peter Fisher, research director of the Iowa Policy Project, summarizing the argument. “They counted that as saving money.”
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This is why Governor Kim Reynolds is going down.
 
jet57 said:
It's the Republican way. The preview of a Republican led healthcare system.
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One of the advantages of the federal System is that there are 50 bases of actions in our country that can be examined to see what is working and what is not working based on the efforts of the 50 states.

If the system replaced by this one was working perfectly, it is likely it would not have been replaced.

If this system continues to produce outcomes that are not desired, it will also be replaced.

Finding out what doesn't work is not failing- it is forming the base for a better idea. Sadly, we don't know it doesn't work until we try it out.
 
itsforthekids said:
Surprise, surprise....a government program isn't run well!
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Iowa Medicaid was privatized a few years back, which is where quality and accountability started to fall off a cliff.

See: this thread.
 
itsforthekids said:
Bull****.
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Neither point--that Iowa's Medicaid program was privatized and that the companies now running it are doing a ****ty job--is up for dispute at this point.

But you're right that the ideologues in the governor's mansion who engineered this are also to blame.
 
Greenbeard said:
Neither point--that Iowa's Medicaid program was privatized and that the companies now running it are doing a ****ty job--is up for dispute at this point.

But you're right that the ideologues in the governor's mansion who engineered this are also to blame.
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They're solely to blame. Healthcare has become a commodity...just like everything else. Once we start claiming income, food, housing, etc as rights, you begin conscripting the productive into providing for those who aren't. That being said, there should be temporary safety nets for those who are incapable of providing for themselves...but not providing generational welfare. We, as a people, are quite capable of taking care of each other without having a bureaucrats sticky fingers between us and the ones being provided for.
 
jonny5 said:
So they should come in here and change my mind or at least defend their argument. See above about how this is a DEBATE FORUM.
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I'm not going to try to change the mind of a sociopath. You've already admitted that you would rather let people needing chemotherapy die than risk paying a little bit more in taxes. There is nothing to discuss or debate, as we obviously have opposing goals, and different motivations, and any facts surrounding the cost-to-benefit ratio of Medicare-for-all vs a profit-motive system isn't going to change that. Thank you for your honesty. I wish lawmakers in D.C. were this forthcoming.
 
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