Iowa Medicaid leaders still negotiating insurers' pay as new fiscal year starts
Iowa administrators are still negotiating how much they’ll pay national insurance companies to run the state’s $5 billion Medicaid program in fiscal year 2020, which starts Monday.
Hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars are on the table in the extended contract negotiations between state officials and the insurance companies. The companies, also known as managed care organizations, cover nearly 600,000 poor or disabled Iowans on Medicaid.
The same thing happened last summer. Payment negotiations stretched into August, nearly two months after the insurance companies’ contracts took effect for the year. The Iowa Department of Human Services wound up agreeing to give the companies a $344 million raise — an 8.4% increase in state and federal money — for fiscal year 2019.
Medicaid Director Mike Randol said in an interview Wednesday the negotiations for next fiscal year are going well. “We’re very close to finalizing those,” he said.
Read more: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2019/06/28/iowa-medicaid-still-negotiating-insurers-pay-new-fiscal-year-starts-managed-care-privatization/1594327001/