Regarding the below quoted News and Observer article...
Thank you Senator Jim Davis! How indeed are we going to take care of the folks - the most vulnerable and fragile of populations - that this government is supposed to be protecting? WE are scared to death too!
And Representative Dollar et al. -- with all due respect for the difficult jobs you do - it's never too late to do what's right, even if what's right turns out to be the same destination as where we are heading...
- Shouldn't we be absolutely certain that we're getting this right this time given the State's already overburdened fiscal situation and massive responsibility?
- Shouldn't we be absolutely certain that we're getting this right this time given the importance of our mutual successes in light of a historic controlling party shift?
- Shouldn't we be absolutely certain that we're getting this right this time given the magnitude of what is at stake for Developmentally Disabled consumers and families?
- Shouldn't we be absolutely certain that we're getting this right this time given our propensity to not only doom our reform iterations to failure, but habitually self-fulfill those prophesies?
And here are just a few more reasons why:
NC lawmakers direct another mental health overhaul
BY GARY D. ROBERTSON - ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, 12 June 2012
[ Read FULL article. ]
Lawmakers this year are putting additional touches on another makeover from last year that will further regionalize the administration of services and create a form of managed care for Medicaid patients rarely used in other states. The government agencies will essentially become public-sector insurance companies. About $2 billion in state and federal money is spent treating more than 300,000 consumers combined.
Consumer advocates and some lawmakers are worried past mistakes are being repeated and patients are losing services, but there are no signs the process will be slowed dramatically. While the Senate's state budget proposal released Monday scaled back expected cost savings from the changes next year from $53 million to $42 million, eleven so-called "managed care organizations" are still slated to cover all 100 counties by Jan. 1. More than 40 counties already have been phased in to the new system.
"This whole thing scares me to death," said Sen. Jim Davis, R-Macon, as he took issue last week with a complicated bill a Senate committee took several hours to review that laid out how these new organizations will be governed. If lawmakers struggle with this bill, he asked, "how are we going to take care of the folks that this governance is supposed to be protecting?"
Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, a primary sponsor of 2011 legislation that directed the state Department of Health and Human Services to take statewide a managed-care pilot program in five Piedmont counties, told Davis turning back now is a mistake.
Otherwise, Dollar added, "you're almost going to doom this iteration of reform to failure, and I would just submit that we cannot afford to do that for the citizens of this state."
The managed care organizations will cover larger populations than the local management entities being phased out. The state will contract with the organizations and give them a fixed amount of money for each Medicaid-eligible consumer to provide services. Medicaid previously paid for each service the consumer received.
Federal Medicaid regulators allow the managed care organizations to limit which providers will offer services in their network as a cost-containment measure. This change means some providers could ultimately see business dry up. Proponents said the fixed per-patient payment provides an incentive to provide proper levels of care for people with bipolar disorder, alcohol dependency or mental retardation, rather than offering unnecessary services.
The new system's success hinges on whether the Piedmont Behavioral Health pilot can be reproduced elsewhere statewide. Cabarrus, Davidson, Rowan, Stanly and Union counties began the managed-care demonstration project in 2005.
[ Read FULL article. ]
