Health care providers warn Medicaid director of impending crisis
Foxhoven, appointed by Gov.
Much of Thursday's conversation with the Southeast Iowa Days group in a conference room at the
He said the roughly 600,000 Iowans who depend on Medicaid for their health care are comprised of four main groups: children, low-income adults, elderly and the disabled.
"The whole purpose of managed care is to start trying to bend the cost curve so we can be there in the long term," Foxhoven said of the for-profit system former Gov.
Randol, former Medicaid director in
"Every decision I make is going to be focused on those 600,000 members," he said. "I want to make sure that, as Director Foxhoven said, we have to think about three years, five years, 10 years from now that the Medicaid program is still here. So, we have to have that sustainability and that means we have to have managed care in the state of
"What we're being paid is not going to even cover the direct care workers," said Marple. "I talked with several providers from around the state yesterday and they are not accepting any new Medicaid (patients) because the new rates don't even pay them. So people are going without service, and these are people that need home health service or need long term care service."
As Marple pointed out, insurance reimbursement rates for services performed by the health care providers are not set by the managed care organizations, they are established by the state.
"The rates that we've received reimburse us at our cost level back to 2013," Marple said. "Right now there is going to be a larger number of rural Iowans that are denied Medicaid service because no provider, or fewer providers, are going to be providing the service, because to do so would cause them to go into bankruptcy."
"I do think there is going to be a crisis in
In November, Gardner and hospital CFO
Bartles was among a select group of health care providers meeting privately Thursday afternoon with Randol for his first working group session on Medicaid since he was appointed.
Because the meeting was not open to lawmakers, members of the public or media outlets, Randol received some criticism for his handling of the meeting, a decision Randol said he stood by.
"I cannot have the legislators and media in that room. It's not going to be a focused group," Randol said. "I want providers to come into that room, feel free to share with me what they believe the issues to be, have that conversation back and forth -- an honest conversation -- and be able to work toward resolution."
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