New Plan Won’t Cut Medicaid to S.C. Children
Aug. 18–South Carolina will present to the federal government a new plan to overhaul Medicaid, officials said Wednesday, after the state’s original proposal met stiff public resistance.
S.C. Health and Human Services director Robbie Kerr said the state cannot withdraw the controversial plan it sent to the federal government in June. The state, however, can and will submit a reworked proposal, Kerr told about 30 state lawmakers.
Kerr said the new proposal — unlike the original — will not cut medical services to children.
“I won’t cut children’s benefits,” Kerr said in response to several legislators’ questions about that portion of the original plan, submitted in June.
Instead, a 10-member committee Kerr appointed this month will help Health and Human Services rewrite certain aspects of the state’s proposal to change Medicaid in South Carolina, known as a waiver.
“We are revising it (the original proposal), in some significant ways,” Kerr said.
Kerr and his staff did not say what parts of the original proposal they will change.
The plan the federal government already has, “South Carolina Healthy Choice,” would raise costs to low-income patients, several studies have concluded. It also would cut medical services and benefits to children, a proposal that has proven to be a lightning rod for criticism.
Kerr’s agency Wednesday posted on its Web site (www.dhhs.state.sc.us) revisions to the proposal concerning children’s services. Those will be part of the new proposal sent to Washington.
Kerr also told legislators he wanted their input for the new proposal. However, Kerr doesn’t plan to slow the state’s effort to get federal approval of a Medicaid reform plan for South Carolina. He told members of the House Health and Human Services subcommittee Wednesday that he wants approval before year’s end.
South Carolina is seeking at least 30 changes to Medicaid. Health and Human Services hopes the changes will hold growth in the $4.8 billion-a-year program to about 6 percent a year over a five-year period. Last year, South Carolina’s Medicaid program grew by 5.8 percent, one of the nation’s lowest growth rates.
Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, directed Kerr to make changes in the program.
Kerr also said his agency is reconsidering whether to require higher co-payments for medical services from Medicaid beneficiaries.
“Two dollars isn’t much money to me, but it’s a lot to someone on Medicaid,” Kerr said, noting that a family of three must make less than $15,000 a year to quality for the program.
Legislators — and the public — packed a conference room in the State House complex to hear the discussion.
Some legislators have opposed Sanford’s proposal, in part over its substance but also over the secretive process that produced the plan.
“I left the meeting feeling somewhat better than I did going in because they understand now their waiver has to be adjusted,” said House Minority Leader Harry Ott, D-Calhoun, a subcommittee member.
“The public knows what they’re trying to do, and they, as well as members of the Legislature, intend to make sure the poor children in South Carolina don’t suffer.”
Legislators, most of them members of the Legislature’s minority Democratic Party, peppered Kerr with questions about the plan’s cost and the process his agency undertook to produce it.
Several dozen people were unable to get into Wednesday’s meeting and had to stand in a hallway. Some child advocates said they had been told they could speak during the meeting but, in the end, were not allowed to.
Subcommittee chairman Rep. Tracy Edge, R-Horry, said he might schedule a meeting for members of the public to voice their concerns about the Medicaid plan.
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