The average cost of insuring an Iowan on Medicaid has climbed nearly three times as fast since the state hired private companies to manage the program, when compared to the previous six years, new state figures show. Since fiscal 2017, the first full year of privatization, the per-member cost of Iowa’s Medicaid program has risen an average of […]

A Presentation for the Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, November 2018: Medicaid expenditures (25%) continue to dominate state policy HCBS Waivers Have Grown Dramatically over the past two decades The expansion means that HCBS and Nursing Homes need to be managed States have been trying to shift risk– financial and management to […]

The current political debate over Medicaid has centered on the idea of putting patients to work so they can earn their government benefits. Yet some experts say the country would be better served by asking this question instead: Are insurance companies — which receive hundreds of billions in public money — earning their Medicaid checks? More than […]

Since the early 1980s, service providers and area agencies on aging, that is, the aging network, have developed a number of strengths as they built a community-based long-term-care system in most states. Many area agencies and providers now have the capacity to assess the needs of older persons, identify appropriate services, and administer cost effective […]

Part 1: The preventable tragedy of D’ashon Morris Doctors described him as “happy and playful” and told his foster mother he would be healthy by the time he went to kindergarten. That was before a giant health care company made a decision that saved it as much as $500 a day — and cost D’ashon […]