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NO MORE EXCUSES, GOVERNOR. COME CLEAN ON MEDICAID COSTS
https://iowastartingline.com/2018/05/24/no-more-excuses-governor-come-clean-on-medicaid-costs/Last week, Governor Kim Reynolds’ Department of Human Services (DHS) gave three separate and wildly contradictory estimates of Medicaid privatization savings. Not only do these three latest estimates conflict with one another, none of them come close to earlier estimates made by Reynolds’ office. Adding to their latest wacky estimates, Reynolds has failed to provide any substantiation of these alleged savings.
The first savings estimate put out on Thursday was described as a “projected annual range” of $140.9 million. The next day, they reversed their description, calling it a “cumulative” savings since April 2016. Later on Friday, they changed their description a third time and claimed the $140.9 million was an annual estimate.
These latest estimates differ as well from a December 2017 projection of $47 million in savings for the current fiscal year. None of these latest estimates come close to the original 2015 promise of $232 million in savings this fiscal year. It’s obvious Iowa taxpayers have been bamboozled over and over by Reynolds’ incompetent management by this estimating circus.
Imagine if Reynolds was the CEO of a $5 billion company (Medicaid costs taxpayer $4.8 billion per year) and issued multiple conflicting estimates of millions of dollars in savings over two years with no underlying verification? If this were private sector corporate management, Reynolds would be history. No board of directors would tolerate this comically incompetent and bungling management of billions of dollars. Iowa taxpayers are her board of directors and they deserve an accurate and professional assessment of savings based on a verified accounting of all spending.
Democratic Senator Pam Jochum is asking State Auditor Mary Mosiman, “to determine if Iowans are really saving money by paying out-of-state, for-profit insurance companies to care for our most vulnerable … Auditor Mosiman has said her unofficial office motto is, ‘In God We Trust. Everyone Else We Audit.’ That’s exactly the attitude we should all take to the suspect claims being made about Iowa’s disastrous Medicaid privatization.”
more at link
Truth be told, Reynolds probably has no idea if any money has been saved or if whatever money was saved came at the cost of death or poor service to patients. Medicaid must be measured by the service it provides along with the costs.
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