Governor Malloy.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy will make more than $63 million in new cuts to hospital Medicaid payments, says a WSHU report.
His budget office said the cuts are necessary for the state to maintain a balanced budget.
Not surprisingly, Connecticut Hospital Association CEO Jennifer Jackson said reducing hospitals’ Medicaid payments will hurt patients and providers.
“With nearly one in five Connecticut residents on Medicaid, withdrawing even more funding from the state’s obligation is outrageous. It puts a tremendous additional strain on healthcare providers who already provide services with reimbursement that is nowhere near the actual cost of delivering that care.”
The cuts will certainly hurt, but we at Cambridge Management Group note that there’s vast opportunity to save money in Medicaid by reducing the number of avoidable hospital re-admissions and far better integrating behavioral healthcare and other healthcare.
This is particularly important in Connecticut’s struggling cities, with their large low-income populations.
The long failure to adequately address the impact of behavioral, emotional and mental illness on the cost of treating “physical illness” accounts for much of Medicaid’s spiraling expenses. And connected with this is American healthcare long giving short shrift to the social determinants of health.
