What's on the chopping block?

This past spring during the budget showdown in Frankfort, Kentucky's Center for Health and Family Services (CHFS) and the Department for Medicaid Services (DMS) issued a public notice warning of proposed cuts to provider reimbursements. If the governor's plan to borrow funds from next year's Medicaid budget was not passed, DMS threatened to cut reimbursement to providers by 35 percent. The public notice was only available online for a short time.

The Bluegrass Institute issued an Open Records Request to view these proposed cuts again. We recently received a response from CHFS providing a copy of the public notice.

Here's what you'll find in the document: if you're a health care provider, you're in trouble. Across the board, providers would face 35 percent reduction in reimbursements for Medicaid patients. Medicaid currently pays less than both Medicare and private insurance.

Next week, we will release a study on Medicaid spending in Kentucky, and this year's Medicaid budget deficit is only the beginning of our problems. The state and its health care providers will be faced with increasingly difficult choices to make.

Unfortunately, instead of working with providers to improve the efficacy of Medicaid, the state has already determined which areas they're going to cut.

These cuts will turn treating Medicaid patients into a losing proposition for providers, who will have to choose between accepting Medicaid and staying in business; as a result, the most needy Kentuckians are the ones who will suffer.