House Select Committee on Health Care approves $65 million Medicaid relief plan for 2006-07

More on Medicaid relief

The House Select Committee on Health Care approved April 11 a proposal that would use $65 million in state Medicaid savings to provide Medicaid relief for counties in 2006-07 and would put in place a permanent cap for the county Medicaid share at 2005-06 levels. Under the plan, which was offered by the NCACC and approved by the Medicaid Subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Health Care on March 28, $30.4 million would be used to cap county Medicaid costs at the 2005-06 level of $459.8 million. The additional $34.6 million would be used to provide targeted relief to all counties based on a counties’ percentage of Medicaid-eligible citizens.

Rep. Edd Nye (Bladen), who co-chaired the House Select Committee on Health Care and the Medicaid subcommittee, made the motion to adopt the proposal. The motion received several seconds and passed unanimously. NCACC First Vice President Terry Garrison (Vance County), Past President Noah Woods (Robeson County) and Durham County Commissioner Michael Page were in attendance at the meeting along with NCACC Executive Director David F. Thompson.

“We still have a long way to go to get Medicaid relief in the upcoming short session,” said Thompson. “We will be calling on county commissioners and managers to assist us in pushing this relief forward.”

For details and county-by-county impacts under the proposal, visit www.ncacc.org/medicaidproposal_032806.html.