Health Plan Leaders Stress Compromise With States on Medicaid

by Leslie Small

At the Medicaid Health Plans of America (MHPA) conference, Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy for Families USA, said Medicaid health plans should use their voices to speak out against work requirement proposals that restrict Medicaid eligibility. "I encourage you to push the envelope" in this debate, he said.

However, in a panel discussion directly after Fishman made his remarks, some health plan leaders expressed a desire to compromise with right-leaning policymakers in order to preserve the benefits of Medicaid expansion.

One of those leaders was University of Utah Health Plans CEO Chad Westover, whose state could be one of three to expand Medicaid for the first time via a ballot initiative in the upcoming midterm elections. He suggested that red states like Utah need space to be able to pursue Medicaid expansion on their own terms, which in Utah’s case will likely involve work requirements.

"So whatever comes out is going to have to be — and you hear this a lot — the Utah way. Not the Washington, D.C., way, not the Vermont way or the Oregon way, but the Utah way," he added.
Marti Lolli, chief medical officer and senior vice president of consumer and government markets for Priority Health, said her organization aimed to work collaboratively with state leaders when they chose to pursue Medicaid work requirements.

"The first couple proposals that came out on work requirements were very concerning," Lolli said. "But I’ll tell you, the health plan community in Michigan was at the table with him [state Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof], advising on adjustments that should be made to really make it a palatable approach, and I think we got there."

Other members of the panel touted their states' positive experiences with Medicaid expansion.

"It's true what everybody's saying — [at] the initial rollout, the costs were higher than expected. There was pent-up demand for sure," said Wendy Morriarty, vice president of Medicaid at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey subsidiary Horizon NJ Health. "But then once the access was there and the care was managed, it went down in a very nice predictable trend line."

From Health Plan Weekly

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