ALBANY – A panel looking to cut the costs of the state’s Medicaid program has gotten thousands of suggestions from the public and industry as it races toward a March 1 deadline for making its recommendations to the governor and Legislature.
While hardly the greatest cost-saver, the idea generating the single greatest volume: end Medicaid coverage for male infant circumcision procedures.
Jason Helgerson, the state’s Medicaid director, told his panel members in New York City this morning that the period for the public to give ideas to redesign the expensive health insurance program will end at the close of business this Friday.
After all the ideas received so far have been gone through, the Medicaid redesign team has narrowed them into a group of 274 different kinds of specific -- and some rather vague -- recommendations. Check them out here.
The ideas included a number of different calls to cut services to recipients -– including people who are poor, disabled or elderly -– that New York provides above and beyond what the federal government requires. Other ideas stretched from changing what providers get paid for services and expanding managed care programs for those on Medicaid to imposing a tax on sugar-based beverages as a way to raise money and cut obesity rates.
The task force team’s staff will be scoring the value of about 30 of the biggest impact items to present back to the panel by next week.
The panel’s work is being closely eyed because the governor did not provide a specific plan on how to cut health spending by about $3 billion this year. The deadline for the group’s work is March 1 -– just one month before the start of the fiscal year.
--Tom Precious
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