Medical Society issues scathing takedown of NC Senate Medicaid proposal

North Carolina doctors pulled no punches in their review of the Medicaid “reform” (i.e. privatization) plan adopted by the state Senate today. This is the official statement from the NC Medical Society:

“Today the Senate had a clear choice between the health of our state’s most vulnerable citizens and the health of Wall Street corporations, and they chose the corporations. Despite strong alternative proposals from the North Carolina House, Governor McCrory and the health care community on the best way to improve patient care and quality and provide budget predictability, Senators voted against this consensus. These outside managed care companies have a dismal history of success (see the examples below). The Medical Society would like to recognize and appreciates the bipartisan support for the consensus plan of the health care community, the House and the Governor today on the Senate floor. It appears that the 28 senators who voted for managed care are not aware or don’t care about the negative history of managed care and are welcoming them to North Carolina.”

For instance,

• Kentucky moved 550,000 of its Medicaid patients to three national managed care corporations in 2011. Since then, a 2012 evaluation by the Urban Institute found that patients faced delays in getting care, and there was an adversarial relationship between the managed care plans and the medical community. State legislators continue to be flooded with complaints and passed a bill to set up an appeals process at the Department of Insurance to mediate disputes between the medical community and the plans. One of the managed care plans pulled out of the state last year, suing the state saying it lost money and forcing 125,000 patients into the other two plans.
• In Illinois, a federal judge awarded over $334 million in a fraud lawsuit against the Medicaid HMO Amerigroup Illinois and its parent company, Amerigroup Corporation, for systematic and extensive fraud for discriminating against pregnant women and those with expensive medical conditions.
• In Georgia, their Medicaid program was fined $3.7 million for consistently refusing to pay for authorized care.