Our View

Our View

The failure of ‘a_ordable’ health care becomes clearer

Read the headlines of late!

“Medicaid rolls top 317,000 in August” “In plan, exchange insurers pay more” “Panel adopts mental health Medicaid cap” “State seeks to limit sessions to 1 hour, 25 per year total” These are just the latest in a series of challenges Arkansas is dealing with in providing free or government subsidized health care to a growing number of Arkansans.

Let’s begin with the story that pinpoints the foundation of the problem which focuses on skyrocketing numbers of Arkansans qualifying for the state’s version of Obamacare, the scam that Barack Obama sold Americans on as “affordable healthcare” for everyone.

Just in the month of August 9,400 Arkansans completed enrollment in the state’s expanded Medicaid program, raising the total to more that 317,000.

Those people who have followed this dilemma from the start were told it was predicted that about 230,000 to 260,000 would be found eligible to take advantage of this free or subsidized health care program that the state has budgeted a whopping $1.7 BILLION to operate just during the fiscal year that ends June 30, including another $43 million just in state funds.

The biggest fear for state lawmakers and bureaucrats is next year when the state’s share will start at 5 percent until it reaches 10 percent of the total cost in 2010.

Ever since Arkansas got into dealing with this mess there have been constant problems with everything from faulty enrollment issues, cost overruns in setting up the necessary tracking systems to unexpected numbers of Arkansans signing up.

Listen, when Arkansas expanded Medicaid eligibility in 2014 to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level, state officials predicted that just about 250,000 Arkansans would actually qualify. Then it was raised to the 260,000 level and now it is nearly 320,000. When Gov. Asa Hutchinson took office and took on this issue it was his goal to reduce the growth of spending in the traditional Medicaid program by $835 million over five years.

Some of the changes that are being made to curb the enormous costs include increasing the fee a state agency collects from insurance companies that offer plans on the state’s health insurance exchange. The recommended fee in 2018 would be equal to 2 percent of the premiums for the plans sold on the exchange, up from the 1.5 percent that was recommended for next year. Bear in mind that is in addition to the fee that the federal fee bring the total to 3.5 percent, which is the same amount the insurance companies pay to the federal government now.

Furthermore, lawmakers recently approved putting a limit on a mental health benefit for Medicaid recipients. The change would also limit the total number of hourlong sessions to 25 per year per person. Currently, the Medicaid program doesn’t limit the number of sessions a patient can receive.

This is being done based on the fact that from 2013-15, the state Medicaid program spent $147 million on group psychotherapy, which is more that the amount spent by the Medicaid programs in surrounding states.

We’re sure that as medical and drug costs continue to rise as well as the number of Arkansans wanting to take advantage of this state’s free or subsidized health care program there will be many additional changes necessary to offset the burden being placed on Arkansas taxpayers.

BIBLE VERSE

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:7 -10