State Health Watch Archives – August 1, 2011
August 1, 2011
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Will Medicaid penalties result in better health, or more uninsured?
The state of Arizona has proposed a $50 annual fee on childless adults in Medicaid who are obese or smokers. -
PA Medicaid's EPCCM med home program saves $85M in four years
Without the cost savings generated by various programs, including a successful medical home initiative, Pennsylvania Medicaid "would have been in a much worse position than what we're in," says David K. Kelley, MD, MPA, chief medical officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare Office of Medical Assistance Programs. -
Focus groups showed lack of support for penalty-based systems
When West Virginia experimented with penalty-based systems that withdrew some Medicaid benefits if beneficiaries didn't comply with certain behaviors, focus groups were done to gauge the public's reaction to this. -
Do incentives, penalties work? Not much evidence to date
The idea of using a fee and incentive structure to motivate consumer behavior change, as Arizona is attempting to do with a proposed $50 fee on smokers and obese Medicaid clients, is certainly appealing, says Donna Friedsam, MPH, health policy programs director at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute in Madison. -
Evaluation of multipayer medical home is under way
A formal scientific assessment of Pennsylvania's multipayer medical home program is under way, reports David K. Kelley, MD, MPA, chief medical officer for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare Office of Medical Assistance Programs. -
Multiple Medicaid directives have agencies "three times as busy"
While South Carolina's governor has given a directive to find ways to spend money more productively in Medicaid, says Tony Keck, the state's Medicaid director, she has also given the directive to present credible alternatives to allow the state to opt out of federal health care reform. -
High-cost Medicaid clients move out of fee-for- service into managed care
Elders and adults with severe disabilities have mostly remained under traditional fee-for-service Medicaid plans, but this is now changing, according to Thomas L. Johnson, BA, JD, president and CEO of Medicaid Health Plans of America, a Washington, DC-based trade association representing Medicaid health plans. -
States need "track record" for move to managed care
Plans' lack of experience is one concern as states move their Aged/Blind/Disabled (ABD) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) populations into Medicaid managed care, according to James Verdier, a senior fellow in the Washington, DC, office of Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan research firm. -
Data show palliative care saves Medicaid money, improves care
Medicaid patients facing serious or life-threatening illnesses incurred $6,900 less in hospital costs if they received palliative care, compared with a similar group of patients who received usual care, according to a new study1. Palliative care recipients also spent less time in intensive care units (ICUs), and were more likely to receive hospice referrals. -
Palliative care model meets goals of health care reform
All of the accountable care principles that are integrated into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) require a clinical approach to the sickest, most complex and costliest patients, says Diane E. Meier, MD, FACP, director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, because they all begin to move the system away from the fee-for-service model. -
Indiana and CMS clash over denying taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood
As a result of the Indiana legislature voting to cut off $3 million in federal money from Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services, the state's Planned Parenthood clinics stopped treating Medicaid patients, but a June 24 federal district court ruling blocked provisions of the state law.