November 6, 2015 6:30 am
CLINTON — Plenty of questions have surfaced following Gov. Terry Branstand’s announcement to privatize Iowa Medicaid. During a listening post this week, those questions continued.
Iowa Sen. Rita Hart (D-Calmus) and Iowa Rep. Mary Wolfe (D-Clinton) hosted a community meeting Wednesday and invited fellow Iowa state legislators Sen. Liz Mathis (D-Robbins) and Rep. Linda Miller (R-Bettendorf) — who both serve on the Health and Human Services appropriations subcommittee — to answer a few of those questions — the ones they could at least.
The inability to provide answers is exactly why Hart said she wanted to host the community listening post, as she, Wolfe and other Democrats at the statehouse feel Branstad’s privatization is moving too quickly.
“There’s a lot of questions and a lot of concerns surrounding the governor’s decision to privatize Medicaid so we decided to go ahead and host this meeting here tonight,” Hart said. “(It’s) so upsetting to people because there’s so much fear and it’s happening so fast.”
Several guests who attended Wednesday’s meeting felt the same way.
Among the nearly 50 people who listened to the four state legislators at Clinton Community College, nearly half were Medicaid recipients or family members of recipients. The other half was a variety of health care providers.
The commonality between all of them though, were the questions they had regarding the implementation of privatization.
Matt Grillot, a DeWitt resident who served on the long-term care consumer advisory group for the privatization, as well as a Medicaid recipient, posed one of the most important questions of the night.
“From the very beginning this has been a very disenfranchising process,” Grillot said. “What is disturbing to me is to find out that the doctor’s offices haven’t fully had the chance to figure out which companies they’re going to go with. Without the doctors offices knowing which MCO they’re going to be credentialed with, the consumers are not able to make an informed decision in under four weeks.”