{"id":178351,"date":"2018-12-26T19:28:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T00:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/12\/26\/unleashing-the-power-of-the-private-sector-2\/"},"modified":"2018-12-26T19:28:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T00:28:00","slug":"unleashing-the-power-of-the-private-sector-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/12\/26\/unleashing-the-power-of-the-private-sector-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Unleashing the Power of the Private Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The price inflation in medicaid <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/news\/health\/2018\/09\/19\/iowa-medicaid-cost-increases-nearly-triple-under-privatized-managed-care-legislature-kim-reynolds\/1293372002\/\">has tripled after Iowa privatized the program<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, it&#8217;s a limited sample, but when one considers that this has almost always been the case with the private sector running healthcare, it should come as not surprise: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">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. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Since fiscal 2017, the first full year of privatization, the per-member cost of Iowa&#8217;s Medicaid program has risen an average of 4.4 percent per year, according to the non-partisan Legislative Services Agency. In the previous six years, the per-member cost rose an average of 1.5&nbsp; percent per year, the agency said. <\/p>\n<p>The new cost figures come amid <a data-track-label=\"inline|intext|n\/a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/news\/health\/2018\/05\/18\/iowa-medicaid-privatization-savings-estimate-triples-after-falling-80-percent\/621049002\/\">continuing controversy <\/a>over  whether Iowa should have hired private companies to run the $5 billion  program. The shift\u2019s supporters said it would slow growth in health care  spending on the more than 600,000 poor or disabled Iowans covered by  Medicaid.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It was never about making Medicaid working better, it was about making it worse, as well as being about shoveling money to politically connected contractors.<\/p>\n<p>This is a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The price inflation in medicaid has tripled after Iowa privatized the program. Obviously, it&#8217;s a limited sample, but when one considers that this has almost always been the case with the private sector running healthcare, it should come as not surprise: The average cost of insuring an Iowan on Medicaid has climbed nearly three times &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[446,368,412,460],"class_list":["post-178351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-budget","tag-corruption","tag-privatization","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}