Medicaid

Governor John Kasich has created a new arm of state government that is intended to modernize Ohio’s Medicaid system and improve the quality of health-care services.  Medicaid reforms - including reimbursements cuts to hospitals, doctors and nursing homes - are a key factor in the governor’s budget proposal. Joining the show is the man appointed to lead the transformation: Ohio Governor’s Office of Health Transformation Director Greg Moody.

Governor John Kasich’s first budget proposal slashes Medicaid payments to doctors, hospitals and nursing homes in an overhaul of the program, which consumes nearly a third of the state’s spending. Already facing a July first deadline for the last of special federal assistance, the governor says that unless things change, Medicaid expenses will become unsustainable. The proposed budget would cut more than four hundred million dollars from nursing home funding, with more focus on at-home care.

The impact of state budget deficits on state Medicaid and hospital programs for the uninsured, with The Arizona Republic reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee, OSU Medical Center Comprehensive Transplant Center director Dr. Robert Higgins, MD, and Ohio Hospital Association media public relations manager Tiffany Himmelreich. Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Mary Agnes Carey weighs in on the new federal healthcare law and the implications for state health care budgets.

Medicaid is designed to provide health care to the nation's poor and disabled. Many patients who are in the Medicaid program have no other health insurance options --the problem is, the doctors who care for them do. More and more doctors are opting not to care for Medicaid patients, begging the question, who will? Gretchen Cuda of member station WCPN in Cleveland has the story.

A private Ohio ambulance company says every time it transports a medicaid patient to a hospital or dialysis session, it loses money because the state reimbursement payments are so low. The company is asking a judge to order an increase in state payments to medicaid providers, but state officials say that's nearly impossible, especially because of a looming state budget crunch.