Earlier this month, Texas lawmakers released a proposed budget that would reduce Medicaid reimbursement rates by 10 percent. (Source) We’ve written about how Texas physicians are limiting new Medicaid patients because of low payment rates. An excerpt from the Austin Statesman:
Such a reduction, on top of earlier rate trims, would drive Texas doctors out of the Medicaid business entirely, said John Holcomb, a Texas Medical Association doctor and chairman of the association’s select committee of Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the uninsured.
“Doctors seeing Medicaid patients now are not going to see them at a 10-percent pay reduction. … You have to be able to pay your light bill and your nurses,” Holcomb said.
In 2000, two-thirds of all Texas doctors accepted Medicaid patients; last spring, that number was 42 percent, Holcomb said. Medicaid serves 3.1 million Texans — primarily children, pregnant women and adults with disabilities — at a cost of about $24.7 billion last year in state and federal money. Medicaid pays for more than half of all births and contributes to the care of nearly two-thirds of nursing home residents in the state.
Last summer, a story reported that doctors in Texas were threatening to withdraw from the Medicaid program altogether.
In related news, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether California has the legal right to reduce payment rates to health care providers that accept Medicaid patients. (Source) The case could affect planned budget cuts in Texas.
