By Ashton Kay, OMAHA, Neb. – With talks of large cuts to government spending, the likelihood of cuts to medicaid funding are growing larger. Medicaid is a joint program between the State and federal government to provide medical care to those without access to insurance, including children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities. Some states, including Nebraska, have expanded Medicaid to include more low income- individuals.
Jeremy Wright is a Therapist and clinical supervisor at Behaven Kids, which is a practice that includes mental health services and a day program for kids. He says that medicaid is critical for his patients, and that most of the kids that he sees are on Medicaid.
For more information about Medicaid watch the full report by Ashton Kay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtQWbqLTO94
“If medicaid funding was gone we’d lose so many children as clients that really need our support, so one it’d break your heart. But second, there’s not enough patients with private insurance and good jobs to go around. We don’t have enough therapists as it is to meet the need. But if you would take out all the kids, then lots of therapists would lose their jobs, practices would close.”
Much of the rhetoric behind cutting medicaid is based around wide spread medicaid fraud.
Eugenia Krieg formerly worked for the Civil Medicaid Fraud Division in the Texas Office of the Attorney general. She says that Medicaid fraud exists at all levels, however most of Krieg’s work was prosecuting larger players, such as drug manufacturers, that were exploiting the medicaid system in Texas. On an individual level these cases are far more costly to the state. Krieg was part of a case involving Johnson and Johnson, in which the company was marketing the antipsychotic drug risperdal to children despite it only being FDA approved for adults. The company contacted members of the Texas medicaid program to get the drug approved for the Texas medicaid formulary and then encouraged providers into prescribing risperdal to children with behavioral issues.
“Ultimately we had kids in Texas that were on antipsychotic medication because of that type of behavior and other drug companies’ behavior at a rate of four times that of kids with private insurance. And the spend on that was billions. I mean just an incredible amount of money.”
