PCMH+, CT Medicaid’s experimental
move back into financial risk that now impacts just over 100,000 people, survived
the budget cuts – sort of. The PCMH+ budget was cut from $500,000 (state costs)
last year to $300,000 this year, but the SIM federal grant has been devoting a
lot of resources to the initiative. We have no idea what CT’s SIM program is
spending on this, or on anything actually. Contracts for the current nine ACOs
have been extended to March. It is still expected there will be an RFP for a
new round to add another 250,000 people to the program. No meaningful
evaluation of the impact on the first 100,000 will not be available until well
after March. In a webinar last month, Mercer reported on their administrative
evaluation of the program, which only looked at policies and procedures,
not outcomes, health impact or costs in the program. They did interview two
consumers from each ACO, but the consumers were chosen by the ACO, not randomly
chosen. Mercer’s evaluation addressed only a couple of independent
advocates’ concerns, and found only a few, minor problems with the program.
We don’t know how much this evaluation cost the state.
At last month’s Medicaid Council meeting, as required by
law, DSS reported on the fate
of the last group of 18,903 HUSKY parents who lost coverage in the budget
cuts of 2015. The federally-required reassessment of the members found that
7,694 (40.7%) remained eligible under a different category. But as of October
25th, only 2,387 (12.6%) were covered by Access Health CT, CT’s
health insurance exchange, leaving 8,822 working parents (46.7%) without
coverage and likely uninsured. This doesn’t bode well for the 9,200 more HUSKY
parents cut off the program in the latest budget.
Friday’s MAPOC meeting at 9:30 am in Room 1D of the LOB will
focus on the over 100,000
low income seniors and people with disabilities that are losing Medicaid
subsidies to pay their Medicare costs.
