People in Florida are in an uproar over the current state of affairs in regards to healthcare for those on Florida Medicaid. The state is proposing a Medicaid Reform in which many residents are advocating against. This reform is believed to cause potential threats to those who are receiving medical care under Florida Medicaid.
Read Part 2: Florida Medicaid: Private Insurance Companies
Read Part 3: Florida Medicaid: Patient Survey HMO Wellcare Abuse
In the attempt to advocate against the expansion of Florida's Medicaid reform, Leslie Rosenstock is taking action. She has a son who has been rejected from two HMO companies and has since struggled to receive vital hormone therapies in order to keep him alive after a brain tumor destroyed his pituitary gland.
Florida has spent five years trying to remake the government health insurance. This process has caused the alienation of doctors, prompted patient complaints and invited fraud. The complaints all surround the fact that the system has placed patient's lives in jeopardy for the profits of large insurance companies.
State leaders now want to expand the same experiment to health care privatization across the state. This will include 270,000 people who are covered by private managed care insurance and an estimated 3.2 million Florida Medicaid patients this year.
Even though there have been many problems, including audits performed by Georgetown University researchers and the policy research office of the Legislature, the lawmakers in Florida continue to claim that the expansion is necessary in order to rein in the exploding costs of Florida Medicaid. It is believed that Florida Medicaid will use 1/3 of the state budget in 2011, totaling $21.6 billion.
Those who are in support of the strategy conclude that money was saved without causing damage to patient satisfaction. House Speaker Dean Cannon states, "We're taking a program that's working, the pieces of the pilot program that are working, and expanding that." However, advocates for the elderly, poor and disabled believe that lawmakers are simply inviting disaster.
The major complaints about the expansion of the program include various concerns, believing that it could:
- Create even more of a shortage of doctors who are willing to treat patients on Medicaid. Based on information from one study, almost one quarter of the doctors who treated Medicaid patients in the two largest counties being tested left the program.
- People will be deprived of essential care. Almost 2/3 of the Medicaid doctors in one study state their patients did not receive critical services by HMOs in the test areas.
- Reduce the quality of care. There were multiple HMO insurers that left the program due to low profit margins.
- Encourage fraud and abuse.
During the course of four years, there were some Medicaid patients who had four insurers over that time. The complaints from patients were frequent and lawmakers were asked to end the pilot because it was causing harm to Medicaid patients, including those who are disabled, elderly or children.
Senator Joe Negron, R-Stuart stated that his plans will avoid the pitfalls of the pilot system while learning valuable lessons from what went wrong during the experimental phase. He believes that Medicaid doctors should be paid more to improve retention. This would require insurance companies to incur penalties if they quit the program, which would direct fraud investigators to oversee the HMOs and increase the amount that must be spent on patient care. These proposals have not yet been tested in any of the pilot areas.
Negron went on to state, "We need to have budget predictability, but I feel a responsibility to our friends and neighbors on Medicaid to provide quality care." While this appears to be a positive proposition, many who have already experienced the managed care system are disagreeing.
Leslie Rosenstock states, "It will be a catastrophic tsunami if they do the whole state with Medicaid reform."
by Dave Henderson (Medicaid Consultant: Sarasota, FL)
by Dave Henderson (Medicaid Consultant: Sarasota, FL)
Learn about: Medicaid Asset Protection
To learn what is an irrevocable trust and how it can protect your assets from Medicaid visit our site:Irrevocable Trust Asset Protection: Ultra Trust®
To learn what is an irrevocable trust and how it can protect your assets from Medicaid visit our site:Irrevocable Trust Asset Protection: Ultra Trust®
Please contact Medicaid Consultants toll-free at 1 (877) 21-Medicaid or 1 (877) 216-3342.
Read more information on Medicaid:
- Medicaid Sitemap
- Medicaid Rules Purchasing Annuities
- Medicaid Transfer Assets
- Medicaid Gifting Rules
- Medicaid Joint Accounts
- Hide Assets from Medicaid
- Hide Assets from Medicaid
- Medicaid Home Equity
- Medicaid Laws
- Medicaid Annuity
- Medicaid Income First Rule
- Medicaid Long Term Care Insurance
- Medicaid Look Back Period
- Medicaid Life Estate
- Medicaid Loan
- Medicaid Deficit Reduction Act
- Medicaid Case Study
