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Brief
On the very same day Gov. Pat McCrory announced a plan to privatize and restructure the state’s Medicaid system, the state’s senior Republican senator was at an event praising the current model.
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was in Winston-Salem today to present Community Care of North Carolina with an award from the Healthcare Leadership Council, a national group of health care chief executive officers.
Source: HLC
Burr and the group wanted to “recognize the public-private partnership’s quality and efficiency in serving the state’s Medicaid population and particularly the high quality of care it delivers to patients in rural areas,” according to a press release from HLC.
The North Carolina-based CCNC has become a national model for its delivery of Medicaid services, which relies on networks of doctors to treat patients and reduces overall health care costs by encouraging preventative and ongoing health care instead of expensive emergency room visits.
Burr’s event in Winston-Salem was on the same day the state’s new Republican governor was in Raleigh to introduce a plan to privatize Medicaid, the “Partnership for a Healthy North Carolina.”
McCrory was in Raleigh to announce that he and his Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos want to reform the state’s “broken Medicaid system” by bidding out the state’s Medicaid program to managed care companies.
If CCNC wants to stay on as a part of McCrory and Wos’ new plan, it will have to submit a bid along with other companies interested in contracting with the state.
Wos said she hopes to put request for bids out in early 2014, if the proposal gets backing from the state legislature and federal Medicaid officials.
Click here to read more about McCrory’s proposal.
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