Protecting the Medicaid Safety Net Act of 2008: Testimony before the Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Health
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Chairman Dingell, chairman Pallone, ranking member of Deal, and the committee members: Thank you for the invitation to testify today on the important issue of the integrity of Medicaid and Medicaid. For me, I am Grace-Marie Turner, president and founder of the Galen Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to research and development and promoting public understanding to find solutions to the problems of our health system . I served as a member of the Commission on Medicaid from 2005 to 2006, and we have many hearings in Washington and across the country to collect certificates of experts and citizens on the program. We have heard hundreds of witnesses to the importance of Medicaid for millions of human beings. Medicaid is really the Auffangnetz for our health care system and a life line for low-income people and people with disabilities. It is vitally important for beneficiaries and for taxpayers that Medicaid is sustainable. The CMS rules by legislation, by the Committee today to ensure that the expenditure of Medicaid dollars of taxpayers in a position to protect and preserve the program. The GAO and the Inspector General have identified important areas where waste and even abuse of Medicaid funds. The GAO found that many countries, games to improve their federal Medicaid reimbursement system, but “there is no guarantee that this increase in payments by the Confederation for Medicaid Services… GAO found that a State , the funds used to finance its programmes of education, and other [for other] does Medicaid uses. ” It does not, and it may even harm beneficiaries. The land OIG found that medical institutes, such as residential care facilities, have been forced off tens of millions of dollars of payments to the States again, compromise on the quality of care for residents. For example, a nursing home in Albany County, New York, had total operating costs over a period of three years, $ 70 million. Creative breakdown of the state payment of the upper limit at $ 132 million in payments to the facility. But the hospice was required to surrender to the state, but all the 50 million United States dollars, which means it is also to a loss of $ 20 million and has been seriously under - effective. It is difficult to see how it among Medicaid patients. In an effort to ensure that Medicaid dollars to pay for the treatment of our patients, it is appropriate to require that service providers and to keep the total amount of Medicaid payments they deserve. The supplier proposed tax similar challenges. The Office of the Inspector General has found numerous cases in which rights have been Medicaid, with patients who are ineligible or rehabilitation. There are, for example, situations in which the taxpayer was nonrehabilitative bill for services such as transportation for recipients of the grocery store, restaurants, or even bingo games. Unless the control is one of those expenditures, states could undermine the ability of Medicaid’s medical services needed, and allows millions of Medicaid beneficiaries. The CMS rules are not perfect, but rather than block, would be a better strategy for the Congress, the administration to produce financial measures to cope with such abuses. The vast majority of providers of Medicaid patients to work for the best possible supply, both of the victims, such as doctors, patients, Medicaid, even though the payment to say that a financial loss. But if the United States, Gaming care system patient is not helped. The OIG land, in this witness before the commission, it is working “to ensure that Medicaid costs are, in fact, medical assistance to Medicaid [and] recipients of funds are used for health care , provided in the annex to Des beneficiaries. If benefits, it believes that Congress is the responsibility of the federal government are not allowed Medicaid spending, graduate medical education, it must be done by explicit. Most of the abuse in the Medicaid program are FMAP or Federal Medical Assistance Percentage. Even though I do not have the time, in this matter of principle, and I quote in my written testimony of my colleagues Medicaid Commission Bob Helms of the American Enterprise Institute, which documents cause distortions that the nature of the abuse, that the rules are designed to address. It would be much better for the Congress to address this problem, and not as the basis for these problems of abuse, FMAP product. We must begin the process of transforming this fragmentation of procedural rules-based program which focuses on patient care and coordinate better results. The quality of care for Medicaid recipients be improved if health care providers of patients who meet requirements and the program is not in the rules and bureaucratic regulations. The proposals, which are aimed at the current legislation, in order to make greater stability of fiscal policy in the Medicaid program. These changes would drive estimated at 13 billion dollars from Medicaid, reducing expenditures by the Confederation in the next five years, from $ 1.2 trillion in United States dollars, the Confederation and Medicaid at this time there. While such changes represent approximately 1% of expenditures, but they were able to show that the desire for greater integrity in the program. For more patients to Medicaid-focused, it must begin with the financing of health care in a new way. The quality of care is fully in the establishment of new incentives to achieve the best results. This means that new funding mechanisms should be compatible with the success of health providers and coordination of care plans for patients, the collection of information on all patients medical use, and most patients information and the responsibility of the partners in managing their health. The focus on these objectives and to ensure taxpayers would be the first patient, it is said, and most importantly, patients who take care of the quality system in the field of care. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I welcome your questions. |