At a Managed Medicaid Town Hall meeting in May, state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, heard numerous concerns about Medicaid reimbursement (payment) schedules and the large losses that McAllen area hospitals are experiencing when these institutions care for Medicaid patients.
Unfortunately, the solution proposed — more working groups, new committees and additional taskforces — won’t fix what’s wrong.
What happens when you have a computer glitch? A geek comes in and puts on a patch. That fixes the original problem but creates a new one. The new problem requires another patch, and so on and so on until the whole thing collapses with patches on top of patches. The way to solve any problem is to fix the root cause.
The Medicaid Waiver, while well intended though it may be, is a patch. It is not a fix. The primary problem is this: Providers and hospitals experience huge losses when they deliver services to Medicaid patients. They either don’t receive reimbursement for years or don’t get paid at all.
Source: COMMENTARY: Fix, don’t patch, RGV’s Medicaid problems | Columnists | themonitor.com