Connecticut pays four managed-care companies $626 million a year to provide health care for the poor. But many of these low-income people can't get appointments with cardiologists or gastroenterologists today, tomorrow or seemingly ever, according to a Yale School of Medicine assistant professor and the New Haven Legal Aid Society
Dr. Kari Hartwig, the assistant professor, believes the physicians don't want to treat them because the state's four Medicaid managed-care companies' reimbursement rates are too low. To test her theory, Hartwig wants information from these firms that administer the state's Medicaid managed care program. Hartwig and the New Haven Legal Aid Society filed FOI requests with the state Department of Social Services to find out how much these companies pay specialists who treat the poor and how often the companies refuse to pay for patients' prescriptions.
The broader issues are whether managed-care companies with substantial state contracts are exempt from the FOIA because they perform no government function or because divulging the data might give competitors an unfair business advantage.
~Local story with much broader implications as all levels of governments everywhere(?) continue to find ways to privatize services. Corporations answer to their stock-holders and board-members, while governments supposedly have the welfare of all citizens to mind. You can't run a business like you run a gov't.
Posted by Cieciel at September 30, 2005 02:15 AM