Reuters
Inez Willis, a senior citizen, sorts her daily medical prescriptions at her independent living apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland April 11, 2012.
Article Highlights
- Every state, including Texas, is struggling with the budgetary pressures associated with rapidly rising Medicaid spending.
- Texas Medicaid spending is on an unsustainable trajectory. The program’s expenditures consume 25% of the state budget.
- The Medicaid program structure itself is much to blame for today’s problems.
Every state, including Texas, is struggling with the budgetary pressures associated with rapidly rising Medicaid spending. To its credit, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has been working for years to develop solutions to the growing Medicaid budget crisis. As part of its ongoing efforts to modernize the Medicaid program, the foundation reached out to me last year to prepare a report on what might be done to reform the long-term care component of Texas Medicaid. I was very pleased to work with my co-authors (Andrew Croshaw, Michael Deily, and Laura Summers) from Leavitt Partners on the project. Our goal was to develop recommendations that would allow the state of Texas to continue to provide vital services to patients even as the program would become more efficient and affordable for the state’s taxpayers, both in the short and long term.
