Clay’s Weekly Medicaid RoundUp: Week of September 16th, 2019
Soundtrack for today’s RoundUp pessimist readers- https://bit.ly/2MaW5ia
For optimist readers- https://bit.ly/2M8fsbh
IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T HEARD, THERE’S A DELAY IN NC- Well all you naysayers telling me you heard whispers of a delay back in August were right. It’s official, we have our first delay in the NC move to managed care. The Good Guvn’r Cooper is throwing a hissy-fit over this everyone-agrees-its-the-answer-to-all-our-problems-Medicaid-expansion thing, and he took his toys and went home when those “other” reps (voted in by some very deplorable people in a Russian-rigged election, I’m sure) were not so excited about a possible increase to the already murderous Medicaid cost trends [insert foolish, but confident economic theory here about “losing out on free federal money”]. Translation: Cooper fouled up the funding for managed care startup costs because he couldn’t get his way and score political points on Medicaid expansion. What was to be Phase 1 in November, will now be Phase 1 and 2 simultaneously in February. The Medicaid agency team is doing a great job of managing the chaos – but there’s only so much Cooper a successful transition can handle. He may end up being placated anyway- as of yesterday the house passed a gravy-train (Medicaid expansion) bill. That bill would expand under the pretense that work requirements and related premiums will be implemented. And we all know how that will turn out (just ask NH in case you have any questions).
MICHIGAN MCO MERGERS- Priority Health will gobble up Total Health Care. The gobbler has about $4B in revenue over 830k covered bennies...