Nearly a decade ago, Republicans privatized Iowa's Medicaid program, promising it would save money. It didn't.
"costs continue to rise for Iowa taxpayers. What would you do to help keep those under control? We'll start with Zach and we'll go down the line. You won't hear any arguments from me about how it could have been more efficient. It absolutely could have, and I've dealt with a lot of that bureaucracy. To illustrate very briefly why I think privatized Medicaid doesn't work is, as a business owner, if you came to me and said, hey, Zach, I want you to start an insurance company where you make profit by spreading risk, and I said, but here's the deal. I only want you to cover the highest risk population and I want you to do it at a fixed budget. I'm going to go, no, thank you. I run businesses to make a profit. And the reason why we see services getting cut so bad and people suffering so much is because these businesses are putting themselves in a ridiculous position, and of course they're not making profit without hurting the people that receive services. It's not a model where they were set up to succeed. If you look at the hard numbers and the data, the reality is Medicaid privatization has become more expensive than it was when it was ran by House of Human Services. House of Human Services had a 4% administrative cost. The administrative cost under Medicaid privatization is a lot higher because there's a lot more rejection rates. So there's an appeal process that's involved with that. There's court costs, right, because people with disabilities have rights."
💬 Discussion
Nearly a decade ago, Republicans privatized Iowa's Medicaid program, promising it would save money. It didn't.
