Iowa Medicaid Changes for 2016

As many of you have heard, Medicaid is being privatized in 2016. This is being done in order to save the state money, as Medicaid costs have risen drastically over the last few years. How these new companies are going to be saving money is yet to be determined. The only logical way we can foresee them saving money, is by not covering medical procedures or paying less for medical services currently covered. Neither of these are good things for chiropractic, as Medicaid already covers the least services and pays the least amount of any carrier. Rest assured, we will still accept all Medicaid carriers going forward. Here are some other things we do know.

1.The transition date has been delayed for 3 months. Due to not enough providers being enrolled, they have given everyone a 3 month grace period to enroll. This means your services covered currently should not change until April.

2.There are three different carriers. The three carriers are Amerigroup, United Healthcare, and Amerihealth Caritas.

3.These carriers will have differences in what they require and what they cover. Some may be easier to work with.

4.We will be enrolled with all of them.

At this point, we do not know which of these carriers will be the most chiropractic friendly. We will likely only figure this out as we go along. We don’t know how these new carrier’s will handle the chiropractic services portion of the health plans. Some things that they have done in other states include limiting the number of visits per year a patient can use or even requiring a medical doctor’s referral before a patient can see a chiropractor. Again, these are things that we will only learn along the way. If we learn anything else, we will let you know.