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Article Highlights
- Nearly 70% of Texas docs will not accept new Medicaid patients, who are often forced to seek primary care in ER’s
- Medicaid expenditures in Texas consume more than 25% of the state budget & are expected to increase
- TX could design a program that covers the current Medicaid population for less than current program costs
- By 2020 the state would be spending $6 billion less if long-term care cost growth was limited to 4%
In December last year, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a report that James Capretta co-authored with colleagues from Leavitt Partners. The report focused on how the state of Texas should reform the long-term care components of the program to stay within the confines of a fixed Medicaid budget, such as would be the case with a block grant.
This week, TPPF released a follow-on report outlining the broader reform strategy for the Medicaid program. The report describes in some detail the provisions which should be included in federal legislation to convert Medicaid into a block grant. It then also describes what the state of Texas should do once it gets a block grant to provide more cost-effective services to its citizens. In short, the report provides a roadmap for making a Medicaid block grant work at both the federal and state levels of government and should be of interest to state policymakers in all fifty states.
