Insurers paid fair, appropriate rates, Iowa official says

The state thinks it’s paying the three private insurers now caring for its Medicaid population “fair,” “appropriate” and “actuarially sound” rates despite documents that show the managed-care organizations describing the program as “drastically underfunded.”

“We believe that what we offered was actuarially sound,” Department of Human Services Director Charles Palmer said on Wednesday. "We believe that the basis upon which we established those rates made sense."

The state of Iowa handed over its Medicaid program with 600,000 enrollees to AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, Amerigroup Iowa and UnitedHealthcare of the River Valley on April 1. In early December, two of the three managed care organizations, of MCOs, reported hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, with financial reports filed with the Iowa Insurance Division showing that Amerigroup saw losses of more than $147 million and AmeriHealth had losses of more than $132 million.

UnitedHealthcare does not have to file financial reports with the state of Iowa but did say in the second DHS quarterly report it had a loss of 25 percent.

Read more: http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/insurers-paid-fair-appropriate-rates-iowa-official-says/article_455f0eae-b0a3-5065-866f-173f0a60aa05.html