Medicaid Cutbacks Draw Fire As Legislature Wrestles With Rising Health Costs, Opposition To Proposed Cuts In Services Mounts

Lawmakers are being deluged with phone calls, letters and e-mail opposing cuts in Medicaid services, and several legislators stressed Monday that nothing has been decided yet.

“There has been no action taken on any cuts at all,” said Sen. Atwell Parry, R-Melba, co-chairman of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

The budget-setting committee has a subcommittee working on ways to trim the soaring growth in spending on Medicaid, the joint federal-state program that funds health care for Idaho’s poorest and disabled citizens. The subcommittee won’t report its recommendations to the full budget committee until Feb. 21.

Possible cutbacks presented to the committee so far - from reducing services for the developmentally disabled to cutting reimbursements to pharmacists - have aroused howls of protest from those affected.

TESH of Coeur d’Alene, which provides services to 165 developmentally disabled people in North Idaho, estimates that 100 of its clients would lose their services under the proposed cutbacks. Advocacy groups representing the disabled and the poor have called a Boise press conference for this afternoon to protest the possible Medicaid cuts.

“It’s going to be difficult to come up with some cuts, but we’ve got to,” Sen. Robert Lee, R-Rexburg, chairman of the subcommittee, said Monday.

Lee said the programs can’t continue as is or the spending will outstrip Idaho’s means.

“If we don’t do something, we’re going to be in deep trouble in about five years,” he said.

Idaho’s share of Medicaid costs jumped from $110 million in 1995 to an estimated $168 million this year. The program is 70 percent federally funded.

When the state Health and Welfare Department presented its budget request to JFAC on Monday, Director Karl Kurtz left out the Medicaid part entirely. That part will be taken up in several weeks, after the subcommittee has completed its work.

Kurtz entitled his presentation Monday “the rest of the story,” noting that while the state share of Medicaid spending has grown 53 percent since 1996, the rest of Health and Welfare’s budget went up only 6.5 percent, less than inflation. Part of that is because of savings from welfare reform, which sharply reduced welfare caseloads. But caseloads for child support and child care have gone up, Kurtz noted.

The subcommittee meets today to hear an update on Medicaid reform efforts prompted by an advisory council put together by former Gov. Phil Batt, and at least one more meeting is likely before it reports in writing to the full committee on Feb. 21.

The panel is trying to find ways to cut millions from the program to meet Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s budget recommendation, and may try to go even further.

Kurtz told the budget committee: “We must do something to control and manage Medicaid spending now. I don’t see how anyone can disagree.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHO TO CALL

A subcommittee of Idaho’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee is considering several cuts in Medicaid. To comment on the proposed changes, contact subcommittee chairman Robert Lee at (800) 626-0471, or your local legislator.