In a two-part series, North Carolina Health News dissects the administrative costs of its Medicaid program and questions whether the state entitlement program really is broken:
“There is no crisis in North Carolina Medicaid, and there is no national crisis in Medicaid,” said health policy researcher John Oberlander from the UNC School of Medicine. “This idea that Medicaid spending per person is spiraling out of control – it’s just not true.”
“National data from the Kaiser Family Foundation have shown that North Carolina’s Medicaid program costs have increased at the slowest rate in the nation and per-capita costs are the lowest in the Southeast. Multiple states have asked North Carolina for help building programs that look like Community Care of North Carolina”
While the state’s Medicaid program costs have certainly increased at the slowest rate in the nation, North Carolina ranks 21st regarding average medicaid spending per enrollee ($6,098) in FY 2009. This figure ranks highest amongst North Carolina’s Southeastern neighbors.
Hopefully the release of more up-to-date data will prove otherwise.
