Current Events > oh look, work requirements are going to cost more to administer than they save!

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/14/kentucky-medicaid-changes-bevin-work-requriements/319384002/

Under Bevin's plan, it actually will cost Kentucky more to provide health coverage to people affected by the Medicaid changes than if the state did nothing.

Cost savings come from the assumption that nearly 100,000 people will drop out of Medicaid by the end of the five-year project recently approved by the federal government. For those who remain, the monthly cost of care increases faster than it would have had the state made no changes, according to the administration's projections.

"You're spending more money to cover fewer people," said Dustin Pugel, a policy analyst for the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in Berea and a critic of the Bevin plan. "I'm not crazy about the idea of us spending more money to cover fewer people."

...

It has added $186 million to the current budget and proposes $187 million in the next budget year starting July 1 for administrative costs, most of the money associated with the Medicaid changes. Part of the administrative costs added to this year's budget would go toward creating a Medicaid computer system required by the federal government.

Much of the money will go to adding technology to track compliance with new rules that require some people on Medicaid to work, train for jobs or volunteer at least 20 hours a week and pay monthly premiums. Those changes are expected to affect fewer than 200,000 people out of the 1.4 million Kentuckians enrolled in the federal-state health plan.

Critics of the plan argue that's a lot of money for a plan aimed at a small fraction of the Medicaid population.

"The math, so far as we know it, doesnt seem to support all the effort thats going into this," said Bill Wagner, CEO of Louisville's Family Health Centers, a network of community health clinics that serves about 40,000 individuals a year, more than half covered by Medicaid...

Administration officials say the changes will result in cost savings to the state's $11.5 billion Medicaid program, which gets about 80 percent of its money from the federal government.

But Kentucky Medicaid Commissioner Stephen Miller told the legislative human services budget subcommittee last week that the state will see no savings from the changes in the next two budget years.

But in budget years "three, four and five," Kentucky expects to see savings of $2.4 billion, about $300 million of that in state funds and the rest, federal.

so basically it will end up being budget neutral over a 5 year span, with the costs of the new platform and other administrative overhead eating up more than 100% of the state's savings
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Wealth is being redistributed to a handful of clerks, and a sweet bonus for some administrator at the end of the year. This is nothing new.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Wealth is being redistributed to a handful of clerks, and a sweet bonus for some administrator at the end of the year. This is nothing new.

We're creating jobs
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emblem boy posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Wealth is being redistributed to a handful of clerks, and a sweet bonus for some administrator at the end of the year. This is nothing new.

We're creating jobs

...I guess!