There are a couple of hard-fought Medicaid issues that have nothing to do with expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
One of them is a change in the way the state pays hospitals for treating Medicaid patients to “diagnosis-related groups,” or DRGs. Figuring that out held up budget agreement on the Agency for Health Care Administration, said chairwoman Denise Grimsley.
“We’re very, very close,” she said in this video on The Florida Channel. Because the panel ran out of time, the AHCA budget will be “bumped up” to House and Senate leadership for negotiation.
Meanwhile, county commissioners took turns expressing unhappiness to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday over the way the state Medicaid program bills them for a share of the treatment cost for patients from their counties. The new system, to be based on the residence of the patients instead of the site where they sought care, will be phased in more slowly than previously suggested, the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reports. State Sen. Arthenia Joyner predicts there will be more changes to the bill, which is headed for a vote on the Senate floor.