HUSKY
CT Medicaid spending down 4.2% from FY 14 to FY 15
Happily CT’s Medicaid program is bucking the state budget trend. State spending on CT’s Medicaid program fell 4.2% between state fiscal year (FY) 2014 and 2015, largely due to higher federal reimbursements, according to an analysis by the Office of State Comptroller. Between FYs 2009 and 2015, Medicaid averaged 4.1% annual increases, lower than the…
Read MoreCT MFP program success featured in Health Affairs
An article in this month’s Health Affairs describes CT Medicaid’s successful Money Follows the Person program. The study by UConn and DSS authors found that participants transitioning from institutional care to community settings reported better quality of life and life satisfaction that continued well after the transition. Some needed to return to the hospital or…
Read MoreAdministration agrees to more time to design Medicaid reform
Monday the administration announced that they will delay the redesign of CT’s Medicaid program by at least six months. In a letter sent last week by twenty one independent consumers advocates, concerns were raised about the rush back into a risky financial model that could cost increase state costs. Advocates were particularly concerned about jeopardizing…
Read MoreIndependent advocates call for more study on Medicaid payment shift
A letter signed by twenty one independent consumer advocates calls on the state to halt the SIM-driven Medicaid’s rush into a return to shared savings, a risky payment model. Dozens of issues remain to be addressed to protect the 770,000 people who rely on the program before the deadline of October 5th. The rush is…
Read MoreShared savings math doesn’t add up, CCIP plans could undermine Medicaid
A new brief outlines the risk to taxpayers from Medicaid shared savings increasing health costs, as SIM is pressing. About half of Medicare ACOs spent more money on health care for members under shared savings last year. If Connecticut’s ACOs perform in Medicaid shared savings as they did for Medicare, CT taxpayers could lose as much…
Read MoreCTNJ Op-Ed: Let’s Halt the Rush to Risky Medicaid Experiment
Today’s CT News Junkie includes an opinion piece urging caution and more time for thoughtful deliberation in moving 200,000 HUSKY members into a very new, untested payment model that is costing more for Medicare. CT’s Medicaid program is a success story – improving quality, increasing providers, and lowering costs – but that success is fragile.…
Read MoreAdvocates’ Medicaid Study Group offers recommendations for Medicaid shared savings reform
Over a dozen Connecticut independent consumer advocates representing diverse populations and issue areas spent the last several months diving deep into Medicaid shared savings and today released recommendations for our state’s program. The Medicaid Study Group formed early in 2015 in response to a request from the Co-Chairs of the Medicaid Council’s Care Management Committee to…
Read More$103 million in new budget cuts Medicaid, mental health services
On Friday, the administration announced $103 million new budget cuts in response to lagging revenues. The biggest cut is $63.5 million in Medicaid, reportedly focused on hospitals. Community providers raised concerns about the impact of the cuts, including $7.4 million in behavioral health funding and $5 million from services for people with developmental disabilities,…
Read MoreACOs not saving for Medicare, model could cost CT Medicaid almost $100m/year
CMS’s vast shared savings experiment for Medicare has disappointed again in its second year. The plan was to encourage providers to assemble into health care systems, called Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), to coordinate care and keep people well. The incentive was that the systems share half (or more) of the resulting savings. The only problem…
Read MoreAdvocates support SIM underservice, cherry picking protections
Connecticut’s SIM plan acknowledges that risks of inappropriate under-treatment and cherry-picking are higher in new shared savings payment models. Advocates were successful in getting a provision included in the SIM final plan that prohibits payment of shared savings to provider networks that systematically deny needed care or cherry pick patients to generate those savings. The…
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