States, think tanks focus on ways to save Medicaid money, find efficiency

Media outlets report on various Medicaid developments in states across the country.  

Kaiser Health News: States Pushing Managed Long-Term Care For Elderly And Disabled Medicaid Patients
Kaiser Health News staff writer Phil Galewitz, in collaboration with USA Today, reports: "Desperate to rein in rising Medicaid costs, Tennessee last year became the sixth state to require its frailest and costliest patients — the elderly and disabled who need long-term care — to enroll in managed care plans. At least 10 other states, including Florida, Maryland, New Jersey and Rhode Island, are considering introducing or expanding the use of managed long-term care. The trend is sparking opposition from the nursing home industry and raising some concerns from AARP and other patient advocates" (Galewitz, 2/22).

The Dallas Morning News: Conservative Group Urges Medicaid Shift To Market-Based Plans
Texas should shift many of its 3.3 million Medicaid recipients into private health insurance to avert a fiscal meltdown, a conservative group is urging. Medicaid recipients who are not disabled should be given subsidies to buy private plans, and the state should ask to be freed from federal rules setting minimum coverage levels, the Texas Public Policy Foundation says in a report scheduled for release Tuesday. The arrangement would let people in the state-federal program "make their own decisions," and all but the most abject of the poor should be forced to use some of their own money so they become more aware of health care's cost, the foundation urged (Garrett, 2/21).