{"id":2606,"date":"2011-12-06T19:41:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T02:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=2606"},"modified":"2011-12-07T09:28:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T16:28:23","slug":"idahos-rising-medicaid-enrollment-drives-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/12\/06\/idahos-rising-medicaid-enrollment-drives-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Idaho’s Rising Medicaid Enrollment Drives Costs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joe Raedle \/ Getty Images<\/p>

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Bruce Vladeck, who directed the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for four years in the 1990s, summed up the Medicaid program this way.\u00a0 “Medicaid isn’t rocket science,” he said.\u00a0 “It’s harder and more expensive.”\u00a0 Years later, a poster echoing those words hangs in Idaho Medicaid Administrator Paul Leary’s office.<\/p>\n

It’s true that in the world of social programs, Medicaid is one of the hardest to understand.\u00a0 It’s something of a catch-all program for low-income people, covering broad and divergent needs.\u00a0 Included<\/a> are healthy children and adults with eligible dependent children, people with disabilities or special health needs, and the elderly.\u00a0 Eligibility<\/a>, which is income-based, varies according to the category of qualification for the program.<\/p>\n

As for the “expensive” part of Vladeck’s truism: for the 2011 fiscal year, Idaho’s Medicaid program received about $1.55 billion in federal and state funding.\u00a0 That’s about a 20 percent increase from state fiscal year 2008, when combined state and federal funding totaled $1.29 billion.\u00a0 (For more on these numbers, see the Department of Health and Welfare’s Facts\/Figures\/Trends 2010-2011<\/a>\u00a0 and 2007-2008<\/a> reports.)<\/p>\n

There’s one clear reason that costs have gone up even as state lawmakers have sharpened their pencils and focused on cuts.\u00a0 Enrollment in Idaho’s Medicaid program has ballooned in recent years.\u00a0 Between 2008 and 2011, Medicaid’s average monthly enrollment grew by nearly 21 percent, from 185,000 to 223,558.\u00a0 In the few years before that, enrollment was fairly stable, growing by 3.4 percent from 2006 to 2008.<\/p>\n

The Idaho Legislature has made a serious effort to curb Medicaid spending.\u00a0 The most substantial cut, approved in the 2011 legislative session, totaled nearly $100 million in state and federal dollars.\u00a0 The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has summarized the specifics of that cut<\/a>.\u00a0 We here at StateImpact Idaho<\/del> will have a broadcast story on its effects this Wednesday on KBSX 91.5<\/a>.<\/del><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Vladeck, who directed the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for four years in the 1990s, summed up the Medicaid program this way.\u00a0 “Medicaid isn’t rocket science,” he said.\u00a0 “It’s harder and more expensive.”\u00a0 Years later, a poster echoing those words hangs in Idaho Medicaid Administrator Paul Leary’s office. It’s true that in the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":2646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[65,46,74],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2682,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions\/2682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}