ANY PERSON who reads this paper thoroughly, and is particularly interested in front-page news, would be familiar with the name Andy Davis. It seems as though every time health care, or Medicaid, or this state’s so-called Private Option plan, or insurance benefits, or health-care coverage is the topic, that young man’s name is in the by-line. And it’s always an education to read his stuff, even for inky wretches who only thought they’d seen it all.
Last week our reporter on the front page beat gave us another lesson on the inner workings of Arkansas’ healthcare system/jumble/dog’s breakfast. This time Mr. Davis reported that the feds might not pay for 100 percent of Medicaid costs for the next three years after all. But wasn’t that what we were all told as the Private Option made its way through the Legislature? That (1) the state needed to expand Medicaid to cover hundreds of thousands of more people in Arkansas, and (2) for the first three years the federal government would pay all the costs associated with that? Now comes word that the feds might not pay all of it after all. It has set a limit of $477.63 per enrollee per month this year, increasing to $500.08 next year and $523.58 the year after that. Payments the state has made to insurance companies for March averaged just over $485 per person. Which, as you can see, is over the limit for this year. And since January, the cost has gone up each month. Not a good trend, that.
Lawmakers are already asking questions. Such as: Will the state of Arkansas end up owing the federal government money when all is said and spent?
Folks running Medicaid in this state say surely not. But, then again, they didn’t see this problem coming in the first place. In their defense, nobody did. Or as Medicaid Director Andy Allison told a legislative hearing Thursday: “We are paying for benefits that we did not anticipate paying for . . . .”
It seems some approved insurance plans offer dental and vision coverage that weren’t required by Obamacare, pushing premiums up. But that’ll all be taken care of next year, the state’s surgeon general assures all. Joe Thompson calls it a “one-year glitch.” And next year those plans shouldn’t include the extras, thus lowering the costs.
That’s good and welcome news. The bad news is that Joe Thompson said the “one-year glitch” was the result of the rush to implement Arkansas’ private option and get it approved by the feds in the first place. So what other surprises are waiting in the weeds-or, rather, waiting in the lines of some addendum to an appendix of supplemental document to the law(s)?
A ONE-YEAR glitch? We’ll take their word for it. But what will next year’s glitch be, and how much will it cost the taxpayers of Arkansas? As with Obamacare itself, maybe the Private Option had to be passed for us to find out all what’s in it, and something tells us these latest little revelations are but the the start, and that there will be a number of other unsettling developments discovered tucked away in its dark and twisting recesses, all waiting to come to light-and add to the Private Option’s mounting expenses and disappointing results. (Did you read the news story in Saturday’s paper about the couple of thousand enrollees in Arkansas’ health-insurance exchanges who had their policies canceled?)
Stayed tuned. And keep an eye on the front page.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 04/02/2014