Medicaid
April 30th briefing on proposed elimination of legal immigrant coverage
Next Thursday, April 30th at 10:30am in Room 1E of the LOB, the CT Health Foundation will hold a briefing on budget proposals to eliminate health coverage for legal immigrants and proposals to increase copays and other costs on all HUSKY families. Two policy briefs will be released at the briefing. Speakers include Pat Baker…
Read MoreMedicaid Managed Care Council update
At today’s meeting, ACS reported that there are 337,533 CT residents covered by HUSKY Part A as of April 1st, up more than 6,000 from March. HUSKY Part B now covers 15,063, moving back toward its pre-July 08 levels. There are also 7,068 people covered by the Charter Oak Plan, however 3,319 Charter Oak applications…
Read MoreApprops budget health impact analysis
Our summary of health coverage related items in the Appropriations budget is posted. The legislature restored the large majority of Governor Rell’s proposed cuts including rejecting premiums and copays for Medicaid, cuts in services to SAGA, restored coverage for immigrants and medical interpretation.
Read MoreAppropriations passes a budget
The budget approved by the Appropriations Committee restores many of Governor Rell’s proposed cuts to health care programs. The committee did not agree to the Governor’s proposed co-pays and premiums on HUSKY families; imposition of premiums would jeopardize significant federal stimulus funding. Also to ensure CT gets new federal funding, the committee rejected the Governor’s…
Read MoreHUSKY waiver hearing – good and bad news on PCCM
As expected, yesterday’s Medicaid waiver hearing before the Human Services and Appropriations Committees was contentious and long. DSS brought out the troops – I counted nineteen staff in the room and they flew in two actuaries from Mercer. CMS also came in from Boston. DSS began with a rosy, but incomplete, description of the program…
Read MoreHUSKY waiver hearing tomorrow; DSS proposal kills PCCM
The Human Services and Appropriations Committees are holding a public hearing tomorrow, March 31st, at 1pm in the LOB Room 2C on DSS’ proposed HUSKY waiver. Sign up begins at 11am in Room 2700; bring 50 copies of testimony. The waiver draft codifies DSS’ reversed course from the legislatively approved PCCM plan and limits the…
Read MorePCCM waiver hearing March 31st
Next Tuesday the Human Services and Appropriations Committees will hold a public hearing on DSS’ proposed waiver application to continue to run the HUSKY program. Click here for our comments. The notable part of DSS’ application is the decision to limit Primary Care Case Management (PCCM) to Waterbury and Willimantic and to only a select…
Read MoreMedicaid Managed Care Council meeting; Dumb idea redux
DSS may take advantage of a legislative error and try to implemented premium assistance for HUSKY, according to the department at Friday’s Medicaid Managed Care Council meeting. Two years ago, the agency’s proposal for premium assistance was rejected by legislators in budget negotiations, as it had been for four years in a row. However due…
Read MoreDemocrats outline three scenarios to save $2.8 billion
Emphasizing that they do not endorse the cuts, the Appropriations Committee described the types of cuts necessary to fill the remaining $2.8 billion budget gap without additional revenues. Across the three budget versions reductions include cutting Medicaid provider rates by 10% for nursing homes and 20% for all others, Medicaid co-pays, eliminating adult pharmacy in…
Read MoreDeficit mitigation plan passes; Eliminates Medicaid payments for never events
Early this morning the General Assembly passed HB 6602, a bill to fill the billion dollar budget gap in the current state budget year that ends June 30th. Among other provisions, the bill eliminates Medicaid payments to hospitals for “never events”. Never events are preventable errors that result in serious harm to patients. Examples include…
Read More