In order to keep Medicaid and Peachcare going in its current form, the state’s top health agency wants to expand a plan that would charge private health insurers millions of dollars in extra fees.
The Department of Community Health says the call for statewide agency budget cuts makes the action necessary.
DCH is looking to account for over 100-million dollars in needed funds. Without it, the agency says it might have to drop some people from the rolls of Medicaid and Peachcare.
State lawmakers in 2005 passed a measure approving the fees charged of three national companies managing Medicaid and Peachcare.
Dr. Carla Denise Edwards, DCH chief of staff, says this plan expands fees to HMO’s across the state. It's something Edwards says is crucial:
"Without the managed care fee, the state of Georgia is at risk of losing $90 million that would normally be available to ensuring that we had funds for the Peachcare for Kids program, as well as the Medicare program. Without this fee, we don't have the money to run those two programs".
Kirk McGhee is executive director of the Georgia Association of Health Plans, a non-profit industry trade group. He says this would hurt some individuals and small businesses by "pricing them out" of coverage. McGhee says this is something that has to run through the Legislature.
"Certainly I would think that Georgia taxpayers and consumers and voters would want those decisions to be made not by a single bureaucracy in the state, but be made by the people they elected to make such decisions".
The Department of Community Health says the call for statewide agency budget cuts makes the action necessary.
DCH is looking to account for over 100-million dollars in needed funds. Without it, the agency says it might have to drop some people from the rolls of Medicaid and Peachcare.
State lawmakers in 2005 passed a measure approving the fees charged of three national companies managing Medicaid and Peachcare.
Dr. Carla Denise Edwards, DCH chief of staff, says this plan expands fees to HMO’s across the state. It's something Edwards says is crucial:
"Without the managed care fee, the state of Georgia is at risk of losing $90 million that would normally be available to ensuring that we had funds for the Peachcare for Kids program, as well as the Medicare program. Without this fee, we don't have the money to run those two programs".
Kirk McGhee is executive director of the Georgia Association of Health Plans, a non-profit industry trade group. He says this would hurt some individuals and small businesses by "pricing them out" of coverage. McGhee says this is something that has to run through the Legislature.
"Certainly I would think that Georgia taxpayers and consumers and voters would want those decisions to be made not by a single bureaucracy in the state, but be made by the people they elected to make such decisions".
