Do’s and Don’ts of Improving State Medicaid Programs
A version of this document is available on the Galen Institute website.
Across the country, state legislatures are considering whether and how to implement Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Ten simple reasons illustrate why states should reject Obamacare’s government-centric expansion and instead develop their own innovative solutions.
Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion harms states
- Medicaid is “Not a Jobs Program:” Former Obama administration official Zeke Emanuel wrote in a New York Times op-ed that hospitals and other health providers should not view health programs as a never-ending government jobs program. Research suggests tax increases needed to fund Medicaid expansion will destroy jobs, not create them.
- Medicaid “Not Real Insurance:” Medicaid’s problems with poor beneficiary access to physicians have been well documented. One Michigan beneficiary said it best: “You feel so helpless thinking, something’s wrong with this child and I can’t even get her into a doctor….When we had real insurance, we would call and come in at the drop of a hat.”
- Not True Flexibility: Guidance recently issued by the Obama administration shows continued unwillingness to contemplate flexibility in Medicaid. Washington continues to place limits on even modest cost-sharing for recipients to incentivize healthy behaviors.
- “Bait and Switch” from Washington, Part I: Given the significant Medicaid spending cuts President Obama himself previously proposed to rein in massive federal deficits, the high federal Medicaid matching rates included in Obamacare are unlikely to remain.
- “Bait and Switch” from Washington, Part II: States with premium assistance demonstrations now must ask permission from Washington to extend them beyond 2016. HHS has shown little flexibility for states, and it could show even less after millions more Americans are enrolled in taxpayer-funded benefits.
True Reform: What states should do instead
- Customized Beneficiary Services: Providing beneficiaries with a choice of coverage options can provide plans an incentive to tailor their benefit packages to best meet individual needs. Similar incentives promoting competition in the Medicare Part D drug benefit helped keep program cost more than 40% below estimates.
- Coordinated and Preventive Care: Reform programs in states as varied as Indiana, Rhode Island, and Florida focus on individualized, coordinated services to beneficiaries – an improvement on the top-down, uncoordinated care model of old. In many cases, preventive care interventions for Medicaid recipients suffering from chronic conditions can ultimately save money.
- Personal responsibility: Cost-sharing can be an appropriate incentive to encourage recipients to take ownership of their health and discourage costly practices, such as ER visits for routine care. More than two-thirds of participants in the Hoosier State’s Healthy Indiana Plan consider their cost-sharing levels appropriate, proving that families of modest means are willing and able to provide some financial contribution to their cost of care.
- Home and Community-Based Services: Providing long-term care in home settings, rather than in more costly nursing homes can improve quality and save taxpayers money.
- No New Federal Funds: Most importantly, innovative programs in Rhode Island, Indiana, Florida, and elsewhere neither seek nor require the massive new spending levels contemplated by an Obamacare expansion.