Medicaid Expansion Is Rapidly Approaching
August 22, 2018
At the Joint Commission on Health Care meeting this morning Dr. Jennifer Lee, Director of DMAS, updated the members on the progress being made toward expanding Medicaid in Virginia. This set of slides from her presentation are a handy graphic which will explain which groups will benefit most! DMAS appears to be on time and on track to accomplish what the General Assembly required and the expanded populations will be eligible for coverage on January 1, 2019. There are some grave concerns:- The six health plans struggled to accommodate the far smaller population increases with the roll-out of CCCPlus and the transfer of the CMHRS enrollees in January – adding up to 400,000 new individuals will be a significant challenge.
- The rates for physician services have not increased; we saw the exodus from serving Medicaid clients begin with the conversion to CCCPlus, we expect that exodus for some types of providers to accelerate with expansion; expansion will be the excuse! This will again negatively impact our populations as they may, again, have to locate new physicians.
- Many of our DSPs will qualify —
- Childless adult up $16,750 (FT wage of less than $8.05) or
- Family of three up to $28,700 (FT wage of less than $13.75)
Here is information to share with your staff!