Iowa Public Radio
By: Clay Masters
Iowa is one of 38 states that radically changed the way it runs Medicaid over the past few years. The state moved about 600,000 people on the government-run health program into care that is managed by for-profit insurance companies.
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So where’s the savings? So far, no state has actually done a comprehensive review of whether private companies actually save Medicaid dollars, says Kelly Whitener, an associate professor with Georgetown University who studies managed care.
“You’d really need to be able to see, are you saving money overall or not, and if you are spending less money, are you suppressing services that are needed? Or are you really finding efficiencies and only delivering care that families really need?” says Whitener.
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