States benefit by tailoring Medicaid to meet unique needs
Texas Insider Report: DALLAS Texas Texas made
the wise choice to forego cookie-cutter Medicaid expansion to cover
138 of poverty in favor of a tailored program" said National Center for Policy Analysis Senior Fellow Devon Herrick in
a recent report showing that expanding Medicaid and conforming to one-size-fits-all reforms
would come back to bite Texas taxpayers.
The state should work toward a program that meets its unique needs that would maximize the availability of private coverage for low-income residents" says Herrick.
Expanding Medicaid in Texas would result in:
Low Medicaid provider fees. On average Texas pays physicians participating in the fee-for-service Medicaid program two-thirds as much as Medicare pays and only half as much as private insurance pays for the same service.- Poor access to care. Physicians are four times more likely to turn away new Medicaid patients as opposed to the uninsured who pay out-of-pocket.
- Displaced private insurance. One research estimate is that if Texans expanded Medicaid as Obamacare demands 82 of the newly eligible enrollees would drop their existing private coverage.
In contrast if 600000 uninsured Texans with incomes above 100 of poverty enroll in private coverage in the exchange rather than in an expanded Medicaid program health care providers will receive
roughly $25 billion more over 10 years than Medicaid would have paid them.
Texans need a unique solution not the cash-grab of Medicaid expansion" cautions Herrick (left.)
Texas should work toward a program that provides the flexibility to tailor its low-income and indigent care programs in ways that benefit low-income Texans and that Texas taxpayers can afford over the long-term.
