At Friday’s Medicaid Council meeting, DSS
reported that per person costs in CT’s Medicaid program continue to provide
relief to the state’s budget, dropping 1.6% from FY 2016 to 2017. Over the last
five years, per person costs in the program are down 3.4%. In FY 2016 Medicaid
consumed 22.7% of our state budget, compared to 28.7% nationally. Comparing
apples to apples, CT’s administrative costs are well below the US average,
largely because we don’t use capitated managed care organizations. Medicaid is
not the problem in CT’s state budget, it is the bright spot.
Unfortunately, the news about Medicaid’s
new transportation contractor, Veyo was not good. Responding to many
complaints, DSS acknowledged that there are problems. Veyo claimed that things
are getting better, that wait times are down to three minutes, but several
Council members related personal experiences of far longer waits. Only one
sanction of $1,000 has been levied against Veyo so far – there is a grace
period in the contract that ends in a few weeks. We will see if DSS is willing
to enforce the contract after that point. They have worked out a corrective
action plan but Council members expressed doubts. In response to a question,
DSS says they have no Plan B, repeating that they are committed to making it
work with Veyo.
