Senators question Scott's plan to privatize Medicaid for kids
Program cares for 80,000 medically complex children.
TALLAHASSEE — Florida senators on Wednesday expressed concerns about plans by Gov. Rick Scott’s administration to alter a Medicaid program that cares for about 80,000 medically complex children with a network of specialty physicians and care coordinators.
The changes would transfer control of the program from the state to a privately run managed-care plan.
Jeffrey Brosco, deputy secretary for Children’s Medical Services, told members of the Senate Health Policy Committee that the Department of Health expects to publish an invitation to negotiate for the contract by the end of the month, choose a vendor by June and roll out the new program by January 2019.
The program will require the same core benefits but, Brosco said, will also provide families access to other benefits such as respite care. Also, Brosco said the state’s goal is to increase care coordination that is made available to children in the program.
The new program, though, isn’t supposed to save money during its first year. And when Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, pressed about whether Brosco could guarantee the changes would produce savings, he qualified his answer.
t I do feel comfortable with is that there are clear administrative savings that we can make,” Brosco said.
Senate Health Policy Chairwoman, Sen. Dana Young, R-Tampa, questioned the state’s aggressive timeline and asked how officials plan to meet it. For instance, she said, the state is giving itself one month to review responses to the invitation to negotiate and to sign an agreement with a vendor.
“Are these evaluators in the ITN process in the department or have you contracted with an outside organization?” she asked.
Brosco said he wasn’t sure whether he could discuss the details because of a “blackout period,” but told Young, “I will say we are hoping to get some national experts as well as local experts involved so there are a variety of experts.”
The state has grappled with the costs of caring for children who are medically complex and who have special health-care needs and, as a result, qualify for the Children’s Medical Services program. More than 9,000 children were removed from the CMS program and placed into traditional Medicaid managed-care plans.
Then, the state transitioned the traditional program into what it calls the CMS managed medical network. Because of higher than anticipated costs, legislative leaders in November agreed to appropriate an additional $5 million to the program to cover the children’s health-care needs.
The plan now is to take the Children’s Medical Services managed medical network and bid it to a private vendor.
Tallahassee pediatric cardiologist Louis St. Petery questioned savings the state claims would occur under the new system. And while the state maintains that Medicaid managed-care plans are required to have the same level of care coordinators as the traditional Children’s Medical Services program, St. Petery said that hasn’t been the case.
The state has grappled with the costs of caring for children who have special healthcare needs.