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S. HRG. 109–754

SECURING MEDICAID’S FUTURE:

SPOTLIGHT ON MANAGED CARE

ROUNDTABLE

BEFORE THE

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON AGING 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

WASHINGTON, DC

SEPTEMBER 13, 2006

Serial No. 109–31

Printed for the use of the Special Committee on Aging

(

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON AGING 

GORDON SMITH, Oregon, Chairman 

RICHARD SHELBY, Alabama 

SUSAN COLLINS, Maine 

JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri 

ELIZABETH DOLE, North Carolina 

MEL MARTINEZ, Florida 

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho 

RICK SANTORUM, Pennsylvania 

CONRAD BURNS, Montana 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

JIM DEMINT, South Carolina 

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin 

JAMES M. JEFFORDS, Vermont 

RON WYDEN, Oregon 

BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas 

EVAN BAYH, Indiana 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

BILL NELSON, Florida 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York 

KEN SALAZAR, Colorado 

CATHERINE FINLEY, Staff Director 

JULIE COHEN, Ranking Member Staff Director 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening Statement of Senator Gordon Smith ....................................................... 1

Opening Statement of Senator Herb Kohl ............................................................. 2

PANEL OF WITNESSES

Anthony Rodgers, director, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, 

Phoenix, AZ .......................................................................................................... 3

Ron Pollack, executive director, Families, USA, Washington, DC ...................... 28

Jeffrey S. Crowley, senior research scholar, Health Policy Institute, Georgetown University, Washington, DC ...................................................................... 37

Greg Nycz, director, Family Health Center of Marshfield, Inc., Marshfield, 

WI, on behalf of the National Association of Community Health Centers ...... 54

David Ford, president and chief executive officer, CareOregon, Portland, OR .. 63

Daniel J. Hilferty, president and chief executive officer, AmeriHealth Mercy 

and Keystone Mercy Health Plans, Philadelphia, PA ....................................... 84

(III) 

(1)

SECURING MEDICAID’S FUTURE: SPOTLIGHT 

ON MANAGED CARE 

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2006 

U.S. SENATE, SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON AGING, Washington, DC. 

A Committee Roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 

10:06 a.m., in room SD–562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. 

Gordon H. Smith (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Smith and Kohl. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR GORDON H. SMITH, 

CHAIRMAN 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you all for coming to this, I think, very 

important discussion. Senator Kohl and I share a very similar position when it comes to Medicaid and understanding its centrality as 

part of our safety net to the poor, the disabled, the elderly, and 

those particularly with difficult cases of chronic disease. Yet, I 

think we both recognize that as it was structured in 1965, Medicaid 

is not sustainable. But notwithstanding that, we have got to preserve it. 

Senator Kohl and I, I think, voted the same way on the budget 

reduction package because my belief was that there was a right 

way and a wrong way to pursue Medicaid reform. I wasn’t persuaded that a budgetary number was the right way to do it if we 

are going to be sincere about protecting our most vulnerable Americans. 

I know there are many different opinions about managed care, 

or managed anything, frankly. It tends to divide people along ideological lines, and yet I recognize there is a need for Medicaid reform. I am sure Senator Kohl will speak for himself, but I think 

everybody sees the awful arithmetic we are facing, and so we are 

looking for ideas. 

I would very much like to produce a legislative package which 

represents Medicaid reform as it ought to be done, and managed 

care is being done successfully by some companies in my State and 

certainly I think the State of Arizona represents a fairly remarkable model. But I have got many questions and I think you all have 

ideas that can help shine a light on this subject in a way that we 

can take the best ideas as they are being developed around the 

country and put them into a legislative package to incentivize 

States to pursue this in a way that we can keep the promise of 

Medicaid and be fiscal stewards of this Nation in a way that is fair 

to our children. 

2

So that is the purpose of this roundtable. Again, it is not a hearing in the traditional sense because I want this to be conversational. I want it to be just more open and I want everybody to feel 

comfortable and at home here because whatever your perspective 

is, I think we all share the common desire to preserve Medicaid 

and reform it in a way that is careful and thoughtful. 

So each of you will have time to make a presentation and Senator Kohl and I will ask questions, maybe even interrupt you to 

make sure we fully understand the points you are making and 

glean from you the ideas that are going to be so necessary to what 

we inevitably have to do, which is Medicaid reform the right way, 

not just a budgetary way. So we value your time and we thank you 

very much for your presence here today. 

With that, I will turn it over to Senator Kohl. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR HERB KOHL 

Senator KOHL. Well, we thank you, Mr. Chairman, and along 

with you we welcome all of our distinguished participants here 

today. 

There is no question that the current trends in Medicaid growth 

and spending are not sustainable for the Federal or the State governments. We all agree that we need to cut costs. The question, of 

course, is how to do that without endangering the most vulnerable 

people in our society. 

We are pleased to have with us today a distinguished panel of 

experts as we explore Medicaid managed care for our high-cost populations such as dual-eligibles, the disabled and people with chronic conditions. We look forward to hearing your recommendations to 

improve the care they receive through better coordination of services, while at the same time looking for ways to reduce costs. 

So we thank the Chairman and we thank all of you for being 

here, and I am sure this will be an enlightening roundtable experience. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Kohl, and you all may already know each other, but let me just read an introduction. The 

most formal part of this is just going to be to read who you are 

here. 

Anthony, or Tony Rodgers, if I can call you Tony, is the director 

of the Arizona Medicaid program known as the Health Care Cost 

Containment System. 

Ron Pollack is the executive director of Families USA. He is a 

well-known Medicaid advocate, and it is probably not well known 

that he is a friend of mine. Thank you, Ron, for being here. 

Jeff Crowley is an expert on disability policy and senior research 

scholar at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University. 

Thank you, Jeff. 

David Ford is the president and CEO of CareOregon, a Medicaid 

managed care company in Oregon, and a constituent. 

Dan Hilferty is the president and CEO of AmeriHealth Mercy, a 

large multi-State Medicaid managed care company, and we thank 

you for being here as well. 

Senator KOHL. We have with us Greg Nycz, who is here from 

Wisconsin. He is the director of Health Policy for Marshfield Clinic, 

and also the director of the Family Health Center of Marshfield, a 

3

federally funded community health center in Wisconsin. Greg has 

been involved with the planning for and operation of the Family 

Health Center of Marshfield for over 33 years. He has extensive experience in Medicaid managed care, having had primary responsibility in the initial contracting for Medicaid managed care in north 

central Wisconsin. He continues to serve on many State advisory 

groups dealing with Medicaid managed care contracting. 

Thank you for being here. 

The CHAIRMAN. I didn’t introduce you, Greg, because you are his 

constituent. I didn’t want you to feel left out here. 

So, Tony, why don’t we start with you and let’s see what we can 

learn from Arizona. We did have your Governor via teleconference 

recently and we appreciated her participation in our hearing. 

STATEMENT OF ANTHONY RODGERS, DIRECTOR, ARIZONA 

HEALTH CARE COST CONTAINMENT SYSTEM, PHOENIX, AZ 

Mr. RODGERS. Well, thank you, Chairman Smith and Senator 

Kohl, and I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this roundtable, although this isn’t quite a roundtable, but that is OK, and 

to have an opportunity to discuss our Medicaid managed care 

model in Arizona. It is my hope that my written testimony and the 

insights that we provide during the discussion will provide some direction for Congress in terms of some solutions for Medicaid. 

The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, called 

AHCCCS, for short, was established in 1982. Its principal goal was 

to provide quality of care, at the same time cost containment. We 

believe these are not mutually exclusive. Over the years, AHCCCS 

has been recognized as one of the best-run Medicaid programs in 

the United States and we have learned a few lessons in that time. 

I would like to first talk about financial accountability and cost 

controls—one of the areas that we have learned that, as the name 

implies, cost containment is really important in Medicaid. We have 

an underlying belief that unnecessary and untimely medical care, 

medications, emergency care and in-patient care drives costs up in 

the Medicaid program. 

We have learned that the best-performing health plans have invested in medical management information systems and the capability of their organizational core competency to effectively managed members’ care, especially the chronically ill or those who have 

high-cost medical conditions. We have found that about 20 to 25 

percent of our members generate about 80 percent of our medical 

costs. Effective case management of those members has a significant impact on controlling Medicaid costs. 

Another lesson I would like to share with you is that we have 

had a great deal of success with our drug management programs 

through our health plans. We have the highest generic use of any 

Medicaid agency and this is because our plans use generics first before they go to the most expensive brand, if a generic is available. 

Effective drug management is a hallmark of our Arizona Medicaid 

program. It was supported in a report that was done by the Lewin 

Group that compared Arizona Medicaid to other Medicaid programs, and it found that in our acute care program our average 

cost was $14.75 per prescription, compared to an average of $47.10 

per prescription for Medicaid fee-for-service programs. In long-term 

4

care, our average generic use was 76.5 percent and a prescription 

cost of $38.91, compared to 29 percent in other Medicaid fee-forservice programs and $69 per prescription in those programs. 

One of the basic tenets of the managed care program in Arizona 

is that paying capitation to managed care health plans that is 

based on a per-member, per-month reimbursement schedule needs 

to be actuarily sound. You have to realize that we transfer full 

medical risk to our health plans. To make the capitation work, you 

need two things. You need adequate membership and you need the 

ability of the plan to manage its medical risk, and larger memberships or assuring adequate membership helps them to do that. 

But you also have to realize that we don’t encourage our health 

plans to capitate their provider groups. We would rather them pay 

them fee for service and set appropriate rates. In fact, we probably 

are one of the few States that is able to set rates at or close to the 

Medicare rates for our members. 

Additionally, I would like to just quickly talk about actuarial 

soundness. Actuarial soundness is an important principle that is, 

in essence, a contract between the State and the health plan that 

we are going to provide actuarily sound rates to them. This allows 

them to have stable financials, as well as it stabilizes our provider 

network. 

In terms of what happens when you have a stable provider network, we just have a recent study by Arizona State University that 

shows emergency room use in our Medicaid program was lower 

than the incidence of emergency room use in commercial plans. So, 

actually, our Medicaid program had lower emergency room use 

than other commercial plans in our State. 

I would like to talk a little bit about our fraud and abuse program. One of the other benefits of having health plans is that they 

also participate and collaborate in fraud and abuse detection, and 

this helps us really rout out and prevent fraud and abuse in our 

program. 

Then, finally, Arizona has the opportunity to make a quantum 

leap, achieving even greater program efficiency, patient care quality and cost transparency. Because of our Medicaid managed care, 

Arizona is well organized in its provider networks and its integrated medical management processes. That positions us to more 

rapidly deploy information technology and to exchange critical personal health information of our Medicaid members to our provider 

networks. 

I look forward, Mr. Chairman, to this dialog. I think it is an important dialog and I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Tony, I live in a very rural part of Oregon and 

most of my Udall cousins live in eastern Arizona, in places like 

Safford and Thatcher. I guess one of the concerns I have as a rural 

Oregonian is how capitated managed care works in rural communities. 

I imagine, David, you would probably admit there is not a lot of 

managed care in eastern Oregon. It is only where the people are. 

So how do we take care of rural folks in Arizona? 

Mr. RODGERS. Mr. Chairman, we have actually found that it stabilizes the network in the rural area because we can verify who the 

members are. Because we are shifting them from hospitalization 

5

and emergency room use of hospitals into the provider network, it 

actually gives primary care physicians and others revenues from 

our program because we have contracts with those rural health organizations, everything from our rural health community clinics to 

individual providers. 

Because we pay fee-for-service, those individual providers are 

able to sustain their practices out in those rural areas. So it has 

really worked to the benefit of our rural communities because without Medicaid in those communities, if there were a number of uninsured, those providers would not be able to stand in terms of financial stability. 

The CHAIRMAN. It might have taken a little longer to get to rural 

Arizona, but it is there now? 

Mr. RODGERS. Yes. Actually, we have been mandatory Medicaid 

since the inception. So from the beginning, we have had plans that 

have specialized in those rural communities and have learned how 

to work with the providers. Because we are able to integrate health 

care between the rural communities and sometimes the tertiary 

care centers, it really works to control costs because our goal is to 

give every person a primary care physician that is going to be their 

normal place that they will go and get care, whether that is a community clinic or whether that is an individual community provider. 

So it has worked very well. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you speak a little more specifically to what 

incentives you have provided, what oversight you provide, you 

know, contract negotiations that, on the one hand, allow you to 

capitate things, but on the other hand I think the concern of many 

is corners are not cut when it comes to care, and particularly those 

with chronic disabilities, dual-eligibles and the like? 

Mr. RODGERS. Well, I think there are three underlying strategies 

or operational processes that really help our process with our 

health plans. No. 1, we set rates that are actuarily sound, so we 

do look at utilization and we look at cost, and we escalate our rates 

or increase our rates based on what we are seeing in the care of 

members. If we have members at risk or high risk in a plan, there 

is an adjustment that is given to those plans. 

In addition to that, our plans over the years have developed sophisticated medical management programs and case management, 

and so they do a lot of prevention especially in long-term care. Especially with our dual eligibles, there are a lot of touch points that 

our plans have with those individual patients, and the reason is 

that they are at risk for the costs and they know if they do early 

detection, prevention and get the member to see their primary care 

physician, it reduces emergency room use and it reduces in-patient 

care. 

In addition to that, over time, it has allowed a whole network of 

home and community-based services to develop in both the rural as 

well as the urban areas because we are funding those services. So, 

over time, we have been able to elevate the resources the communities in those communities as well. 

The final thing is that our plans pay fee for service, and physicians in our communities and the other providers like fee for service. Capitated relationships with providers is much more difficult 

for them to manage. But by paying fee for service and us overVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:19 Jan 17, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\31449.TXT SAGING1 PsN: JOYCE
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seeing that they are paying correctly and that they are paying on 

time, it has made it possible for our provider network to be very 

stable. We have about 85 percent of the Arizona providers participating. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know Ron Pollack, next to you? 

Mr. RODGERS. Yes, Ron and I have met. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a Ron Pollack in Arizona, somebody 

who is an advocate for care? 

Mr. RODGERS. We have a number of organizations that advocate 

for care. One of them is our children’s health alliance or children’s 

alliance. They do a lot of focused effort around children’s insurance 

programs and they have been a great supporter of AHCCCS. I understand why advocates feel concerns about managed care. If it is 

done poorly, it does create a lot of problems. So it is important that 

the States that are getting involved know how to manage managed 

care, and if they do, it actually works better for access to providers. 

One of the problems we saw in the early days when I was in 

California—I ran a county hospital—we would often get people who 

would say I can’t find a doctor who will take Medicaid. In managed 

care, all the doctors are under contract, so you know they are going 

to take Medicaid. So that has really helped our members quite a 

bit. 

The CHAIRMAN. So Arizona’s version of Ron Pollack—if they were 

here, they would like what you are saying and they would agree 

with it? 

Mr. RODGERS. I believe so. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kohl. 

Senator KOHL. Go ahead. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rodgers follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Ron Pollack, take it away. 

STATEMENT OF RON POLLACK, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

FAMILIES USA, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. POLLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator 

Kohl. I want to thank you before I begin on two counts, one for conducting this roundtable or——

The CHAIRMAN. Square table today. 

Mr. POLLACK [continuing]. Or square table discussion. 

The CHAIRMAN. We will be square pegs instead of round pegs 

today. 

Mr. POLLACK. I appreciate the opportunity for the give-and-take 

that this affords. This is a very important issue because it affects 

as many as approximately 12 million people. They are the people 

who need health care the most, and so I deeply appreciate that. 

But I would be remiss not to thank you for the leadership you 

have steadfastly provided in terms of the Medicaid program and 

protecting and strengthening the program. I think next year is 

going to be a challenging year on that score and we look forward 

to working with you next year and for many years in the future. 

The CHAIRMAN. It will be my pleasure to work with you on it. 

Mr. POLLACK. Thank you. I want to start off by just mentioning 

that it is important to put in perspective who this population is 

that we are talking about today. This critically important group 

constitutes less than a quarter of the Medicaid population and it 

is the population for whom Medicaid is literally a lifeline. They also 

constitute the people who consume two-thirds of the cost of the program. 

By the way, this is not so surprising. There is a recent book published that was written by Katherine Swartz at Harvard where she 

talked about the overall population in terms of health care, and her 

findings were that 10 percent of the American population consume 

70 percent of all costs. Actually, the lowest 50 percent of the population that consumes the least consumes only 3 percent of the cost. 

So it is very important for us to have this conversation today. 

Before I go to the heart of what I want to say, I would like to 

offer two prefatory comments. The first is that the primary consideration as we deal with the populations who are dual-eligibles or 

eligible for SSI or SSDI is to improve quality of care. That clearly 

has to be our top consideration. 

I think it is very possible, with improved coordination of care, to 

improve quality of care. This is especially important because this 

population tends to have multiple chronic conditions. It is not just 

one condition for which they go to see numerous specialists, and to 

have care coordination is critically important. 

The second prefatory comment I want to make is that, if we improve quality of care, we might get some cost efficiencies. That is 

a far better way to go about trying to deal with budget-related 

issues applicable to Medicaid than arbitrarily cutting eligibility, 

cutting benefits, or increasing cost-sharing. My hope is we can wed 

together improvements in quality of care and make some cost efficiencies in the process. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, you opened up this hearing by saying that 

this issue often is viewed as an ideological issue. I am very much 

29

with you in hoping it is not an ideological issue. I think we do a 

disservice to everybody if this is an ideological issue. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am not saying it should be. 

Mr. POLLACK. No, no, no, I understand. That is why I am saying 

I agree with you that it should not be an ideological issue. It should 

be a practical question and we should try to make sure that we do 

something that is going to improve the quality of services and, 

hopefully in the process, improve the Medicaid program. 

Now, there are several key protections that already exist for people who are in Medicaid managed care and I will mention those in 

a moment. Then I would like to mention some key protections that 

I think are important if we extend Medicaid managed care to this 

vulnerable population. 

Under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, there are some key protections that are provided to people who are in Medicaid managed 

care and they are very important and they should be extended to 

this new population as well. First, enrollees should have a choice 

of plans and they should be able to change plans within the first 

90 days and they should be able to switch every year. 

The CHAIRMAN. On that point, Ron, can I ask Tony, do they have 

a choice of plans in Arizona? 

Mr. RODGERS. Yes, they do. 

Mr. POLLACK. Second, with default enrollments, we should make 

sure that we protect existing provider relationships. That is also 

critically important. Third, we need to provide meaningful information for people so that they know what their choices are, their 

rights, the benefits, cost-sharing, and the grievance procedures. Finally, emergency services should be available without prior authorization using the prudent layperson rule, so that people who have 

an unexpected emergency can go to the nearest facility and get 

care. 

In my testimony, I suggested about a dozen different areas of additional protections that should be established. I just want to focus 

quickly on four; I will mention them and for time considerations be 

real brief about it. First, it is critically important that there be serious care coordination. What is very important is that there be a 

sufficient number of care coordinators available so that they realistically can serve this population. 

One care coordinator for 1,000, 2,000 people does not cut it, and 

we shouldn’t just have care coordination when emergency circumstances occur. There has to be a reasonable ratio of staff for 

care coordination. There need to be reasonable standards for care 

coordination, and I think some real benefits can come from that 

and hopefully that will result in some cost savings and improved 

care. 

Second, I think it is very important to have some type of ombudsman services so that an individual who is dealing with some significant health problems can go to a trusted adviser who can help 

them understand what their choices are, what their rights and responsibilities are, and if there are grievances, can help them with 

those. Texas and Minnesota have experimented with it very successfully and I think it is very well worth doing. 

Third, we need to make sure there are specific quality measures 

so we make sure that this kind of managed care actually improves 

30

the condition of people. We need to have assessments about improvements in the functional status of enrollees, access to care coordination, preparation for care transitions, and access to behavioral health services that are very important. 

Last, you asked the question about rural parts of a State, like 

in Oregon. We need to make sure that, before we require and implement managed care for this population, the geographical areas 

are truly prepared to serve these people, that there are good primary care networks, and that specialist networks, and that there 

are no disruptions in care. 

So, in sum, I would say I think the prospects of doing something 

in managed care are very well worth pursuing. They have to be 

done carefully and we have to make sure that the end results improves quality of care. 

The CHAIRMAN. Ron, I want to ask which States, in your view, 

in your judgment, are doing it well sufficient that you would be 

comfortable with their models, if incentivized on a national basis. 

Mr. POLLACK. I think there are some positive things that you can 

see in a number of States and some things you need to be cautious 

about in a number of States. No State is perfect, no State is doing 

a horrible job. So my hope is that given that we have had some 

States that have experimented with managed care for this population we can take the best of what States have done and try to 

emulate that. I don’t think any single State would be the model in 

totality. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is very good. We will keep the dialog up as 

we try to put together a legislative package of incentives to States. 

Obviously, we have got to find ways to save money, but I want to 

state for the record I share your priority, which is frankly quality 

care, and one can’t be sacrificed to the other. 

Mr. POLLACK. It might well be, Senator, that for those States or 

those areas where managed care is being introduced for the first 

time, there is going to have to be some investment, because you 

have to invest in creating an infrastructure, and so there may be 

some short-term costs. But, hopefully, you will see reductions in 

emergency care. We will see more people taking generic drugs. We 

will hopefully make sure that there is coordination among the different specialists who are treating somebody, so that one specialist 

is not causing a problem in yet another area that they do not specialize in. Hopefully, we will have more home and community care 

rather than institutional care. All those things offer promise, but 

they also require investment in infrastructure. 

The CHAIRMAN. When you think of investment in infrastructure, 

one of my other committee assignments is on the Commerce Committee and there are just some really exciting things out there in 

terms of medical technology and telecommuting. I don’t know if you 

are familiar with the Veterans Administration health system, but 

I was at Roseberg, OR, the other day and literally watched a physician through a computer and videoconferencing literally treat a 

man for everything he needed right there, and did it almost, I suppose, with all of the effectiveness of if the guy were in his office 

and he was doing it from hundreds of miles away. 

I don’t know if that is what you have in mind or if that meets 

the standard of infrastructure you think is necessary. 

31

Mr. POLLACK. Clearly, those kinds of things require investment 

before they can truly be implemented, and so it is very important 

not to be impatient about this. You can’t just throw managed care 

into a place that is not prepared to do it, and so short-term, there 

probably are likely to be some additional costs. Hopefully, in the 

long term, it not only will improve quality, but also will achieve 

some efficiencies. 

The CHAIRMAN. Very good. Thank you so much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pollack follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Jeff. 

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY S. CROWLEY, SENIOR RESEARCH 

SCHOLAR, HEALTH POLICY INSTITUTE, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Chairman, Senator Kohl, thank you for the 

invitation to provide a disability perspective as you consider these 

issues. I also want to echo what Ron said. I know the range of disability and HIV groups I work with are really appreciative of the 

leadership of both of you over the last year and hope it that will 

continue as we go forward. 

From my vantage point, it appears that much of the current policy discussion related to managed care is really about how to apply 

managed care to have greater managed long-term care and how to 

use this to integrate acute and long-term services for dual-eligibles. 

I recognize that this creates some real opportunities, but I really 

approach this conversation with great trepidation. 

Today, I don’t think we have proven large-scale models for delivering long-term services and supports in the managed care environment. Arizona is the only Medicaid managed long-term care program that operates both statewide and on a mandatory basis. A 

number of States have established managed long-term care programs, but they remain quite small in scale. 

Turning to integrated care for dual eligibles, I would say many 

of the same things. Large-scale and proven models for integrating 

care just simply do not exist yet. So since these fields are really in 

their infancy and seniors and people with disabilities are quite vulnerable, States should not be permitted through waivers or other 

initiatives to mandate participation in these new programs. Further, I think seniors and people with disabilities need to be engaged in meaningful partnerships in developing these new programs. 

Now, it feels like in the past we have seen that States and managed care organizations, or MCOs, don’t really know how to work 

with beneficiary representatives or they don’t really believe that 

they have the technical expertise needed to really provide a meaningful contribution. But when we look at developing workable managed long-term care programs, I think it is actually the beneficiaries that have expertise related to their own service needs or 

how to efficiently provide those services that managed care organizations simply don’t have on their own. 

So, in short, I would say encourage States to experiment in these 

areas, but please recognize that it is really premature to think 

about mandating participation or about giving States more flexibility that essentially means waiving essential beneficiary protections. 

Now, in the context of managed acute care services, I think over 

time a number of tools have evolved to help us ensure accountability for what we are purchasing, and this includes a number of 

things like the development of clinical practice standards, adoption 

of consumer protection systems and the development of performance measures that allow us to measure how well MCOs are meeting their obligations. Comparable tools for managed long-term services do not exist at this time. 

38

So one thing I think the Congress could do is play an important 

role in encouraging the development of performance measures for 

long-term care. So if we are talking about moving to managed care 

and constructing a system based on contracts where these companies will deliver services, let’s develop the tools to make sure we 

are getting what we pay for. 

The CHAIRMAN. CMS has none of that at this point? 

Mr. CROWLEY. No. There is a private group called the Center for 

Health Care Strategies that has begun some of this work, but I 

think we really need a larger-scale effort to do this. I would say 

performance measures for long-term services maybe are more difficult to develop than acute care. In the acute care environment, 

maybe it is easy to say, if you are a new enrollee we expect you 

to be screened within a specific period of time, or we can demonstrate how often we want you to be able to see your doctor. We 

are not really sure what we are talking about, and we are probably 

talking about less clinical measures for long-term care when we are 

talking about people that come into people’s homes and provide 

personal assistance. It is just a very different situation. 

I would also say that much has been learned over the past decade about how to do managed care and how not to do managed 

care for people with disabilities, and some of things I am going to 

say might sound self-evident, but let me just run through what I 

think are some key lessons from the past. 

The first is go slowly in implementing managed care programs. 

The second is that we have to ensure that payments to MCOs and 

providers are adequate, and I would really like to support many of 

the comments that Mr. Rodgers made about the importance of actuarially sound payment rates. I think that is really a critical 

issue. 

We also need to ensure that States maintain an adequate Medicaid administrative infrastructure. I think some States 10 years 

ago maybe thought that managed care was going to allow them to 

just wash their hands and turn over the headaches of running a 

Medicaid program. I think we have learned that that is not the 

case and to do managed care right we need to have people in Medicaid offices actually managing what the MCOs are doing. 

I also think an important area from a disability perspective is 

promoting disability care coordination organizations as a way to 

use managed care. There are a relatively small number of these 

programs that operate around the country and they coordinate publicly funded medical and social services and they blend attributes 

of both social services and health care organizations. These may be 

a way that States could apply the managed care tools to serve people with disabilities, but minimizing some of the drawbacks we 

have seen when States have tried to just serve people with disabilities in statewide managed care programs developed for the general 

Medicaid population. 

Then, last, I think we need to consider strengthening consumer 

protections. Among other things, this may include more protections 

to ensure access not just to qualified providers, but also experienced providers, requiring States to demonstrate their capacity before implementing managed long-term care programs and strengthening beneficiary appeals protections. 

39

So in closing, I would just like to say I am encouraged that the 

Aging Committee is considering these issues, and I would encourage you to look for opportunities, but also protect beneficiaries, and 

also the large Federal financial investment to make sure that we 

don’t rush into new, maybe irresponsible or wasteful approaches to 

managed care that don’t really help anybody and may promise 

more than they can deliver. 

So again thank you for inviting me to participate in the roundtable. 

The CHAIRMAN. You had a number of really important points 

that we should remember in any legislation that we are able to 

produce. If you wanted to highlight just one that you just have to 

have in any legislation going forward that encourages managed 

care, what would that be? 

Mr. CROWLEY. One consumer protection? 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. 

Mr. CROWLEY. I guess I would say ensure that beneficiaries have 

a right to get access to the providers they need, and so that means 

a number of things. It is making sure we have the networks that 

are adequate, but there might be very specific cases where there 

might be only one qualified or experienced provider for an individual in their community and they could be outside the network. 

So we need structures to allow people to get outside the networks 

to get what they need. That is not about saying everybody needs 

those rights. We are talking about really providing a safety valve 

for those very specific cases. 

The CHAIRMAN. Of dual-eligibles and chronic——

Mr. CROWLEY. Right, exactly. 

The CHAIRMAN. You talked about contract specificity. Do you 

think that was the result of poor training, lack of knowledge or just 

States wanting to wash their hands of Medicaid and their responsibility and turn it over to——

Mr. CROWLEY. Yes. Some of this I said more in my written statement about the importance of well-written contracts, and I think 

what we have seen is that managed care is a major shift and when 

States first got into it, they were learning and they didn’t really 

know what they were doing. I think over the last decade, we have 

seen that they have learned that they are actually purchasing a 

product and to get what they are paying for, they have got to be 

very specific in writing down in this contract what they expect. I 

think that has actually been a major sign of progress that we have 

seen over the last decade is that States have gotten much better 

at doing this. 

The CHAIRMAN. Tony, does that ring true to you and is that Arizona’s experience? 

Mr. RODGERS. Mr. Chairman, absolutely. The management of 

managed care, which is the State’s responsibility, does require core 

competencies of the State employees on how to look at the performance of a health plan. Over time, you develop your performance 

measures and your control points. The contractual relationship has 

to be monitored and when a plan is not meeting their contractual 

relationship, there has got to be sanctions. 

Some States have kind of—and I have talked to other States 

about this—a fear factor of, well, we don’t want to be too tough. 

40

But the managed care organizations respond to this because each 

of the managed care organizations that is performing has invested. 

If you allow a managed care organization not to perform, you are, 

in essence, penalizing those who are performing. So that is an important role that the State plays and you have to have the core 

competency. 

I agree it does take time to build that, but the benefits later—

you really begin to see increase in community-based services. You 

see a stable network, and then you can start to build on that—new 

quality measures, new performance requirements—and really do 

best practices. One of the major concerns I have is there is no comparability between States in terms of how they are paying into 

their care and whether it is justified. I look at what other States 

are paying PMPM and I just wonder how is that justified compared 

to what we are paying PMPM, so to speak. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Crowley follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Greg, take it away. 

STATEMENT OF GREG NYCZ, DIRECTOR, FAMILY HEALTH CENTER OF MARSHFIELD, INC., MARSHFIELD, WI; ON BEHALF OF 

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS 

Mr. NYCZ. Chairman Smith and Senator Kohl, what I hope to 

add to this conversation is the concept that managed care, does not 

always have to occur in the third-party environment. Growth in 

technology, electronic medical records and health care systems, provides opportunities to manage care at the provider point of contact 

level. This can be particularly important in some of those rural 

areas that you talked about. 

Last year, as a federally funded community health center, we 

served over 45,000 low-income people, all of whom were under 200 

percent of the Federal poverty level. Of those, about 6,000 were the 

folks you are most interested in today, the dual-eligibles and special needs Medicaid population. 

I would really like to state my appreciation for what you are trying to do in launching this initiative. I was really excited to hear 

you were pursuing a more challenging and potentially more rewarding path than simply just cutting Medicaid spending. I think 

this is terrific. 

I would also like to thank you for your support in expanding our 

Nation’s community health centers which work as front-line providers to meet the health care needs of our Nation’s most vulnerable residents. With the support of Congress and the President, we 

have had an opportunity to expand over the last few years and the 

privilege to now serve over 14 million of our Nation’s most vulnerable citizens in over 5,000 center sites across this Nation. 

If we are to add value for taxpayers and also protect and promote 

health for our neighbors with limited incomes, we must manage 

their care more effectively across the continuum of financing systems as people move from Medicaid to uninsured and back to Medicaid. If we forget about them when they are uninsured, they come 

back into Medicaid with much higher costs and needs, and a lot of 

work that was done in managing their care in Medicaid is lost in 

the interim when they go through an episode without insurance. 

I believe that to achieve this we must pay attention to strengthening the primary care infrastructure and fully capitalizing on the 

value of the medical home concept, which was mentioned as important in the Arizona experience. By medical home I mean having a 

primary care provider who knows you and knows your circumstances and is your primary point of contact in the health care 

system. 

I believe part of the backlash that we experienced with managed 

care among more affluent populations stems from the frequent disruptions in the patient-provider trust relationship that occurred as 

competing managed care firms sought to move market share from 

one provider panel to another. So as you seek to make greater use 

of the positive aspects of managed care for highly vulnerable populations, greater attention should be paid to exploiting the synergies 

that are possible in linking medical home concepts to third-party 

55

managed care initiatives. Community health centers are clearly 

well-suited to partner with managed care firms for this purpose. 

I would also encourage the Committee to invest in advancing 

best practices for optimizing health and functioning among special 

needs populations. As you seek to harness the potential of managed 

care for Medicaid special needs populations, there will be opportunities to gain experience with point-of-care management, thirdparty management and hybrid systems using State Medicaid programs as natural laboratories. 

I would also ask the Committee to address of loss of State-level 

purchasing power related to the privatization of Medicare and Medicaid in the post-Part D era. If Medicaid drug rebates could be extended to Medicaid managed care arrangements, an estimated $2 

billion over 5 years could be saved. Alternatively, pharmaceuticals 

could be carved out of managed care arrangements and paid directly by the States. 

An example of this approach is the excellent system created by 

Wisconsin’s employee trust fund which carved out pharmacy benefits from their managed care contracts and consolidated the purchasing power of employer-sponsored plans without disrupting care 

management activities because they used technology to feed back 

all the data to the HMOs as frequently as on a daily basis if the 

HMOs wanted it at that level. 

My final point, all too frequently overlooked, is that we must end 

the historic neglect of oral health in low-income populations. A 

growing body of evidence links dental disease to systemic health 

problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, prematurity low 

birth weight, and respiratory problems in institutionalized patients. I urge the Committee to address oral health as key to better 

managing the care of Medicaid beneficiaries, particularly those 

with special needs. 

Health centers have a lot to offer in efficiently managing the 

health care needs of vulnerable populations because they offer key 

services critical to improving and maintaining health. We define 

primary care to include not just medical services, but also services 

related to mental health, dental health and enabling services. Several studies have found that health centers save Medicaid 30 percent or more in annual spending per beneficiary due to reduced 

specialty care referrals and fewer hospital admissions, saving an 

estimated $3 billion in combined Federal and State Medicaid expenditures. The continued expansion of health centers means medical homes for more people and even greater savings. 

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present today. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Greg. I really compliment you and all 

in the community health care center community. I think it is one 

of the answers to our problem, and not the total answer, but I am 

a tremendous fan of the work that you do. 

Have you seen a reluctance of managed care companies willing 

to work with community health centers? 

Mr. NYCZ. In our State, no, but I know that goes on in other 

parts of the country. 

The CHAIRMAN. Does it have to do with reimbursement rates and 

stuff like that? 

56

Mr. NYCZ. It might, but I think Congress has done a great deal 

already to try to help that situation in terms of working it out with 

wrap-around payments under Medicaid and Medicare in ways that 

don’t disrupt traditional contracting arrangements with HMOs. But 

Health Centers really do have, I think, a great potential to team 

with managed care firms because we can manage front-line care 

and get preventive care and enabling services to people, but we 

can’t do it all. So linking with managed care firms is actually a 

very natural thing that could be very helpful for the most vulnerable people. 

The CHAIRMAN. I need to understand better the point you were 

making about dental care as an indicator of some larger health 

care issues. Is that the point you were making? 

Mr. NYCZ. That, and the fact that when I talk with folks in the 

disability community, one of the things they frequently tell me as 

a health center is we can help—by providing dental access. For instance, we have the PACE program which tries to get people out 

of institutions or living in home settings for a longer period of time. 

We are working with them and they are very excited about the construction of our new dental facility because they can’t get the dental care they need for all their patients. 

The studies particularly for institutionalized patients indicate 

that particularly with periodontal disease, the kind of bacteria that 

inhabits the mouth doesn’t stay there and it can migrate in the 

body and cause infections, pneumonia, and so forth, and there is 

a growing body of scientific evidence on this topic. 

So if you want to best manage care and you want to improve 

quality, we can’t forget about mental health, we can’t forget about 

oral health, and we can’t forget that some people, particularly in 

very special needs populations, need what we refer to as enabling 

services. They need additional help in getting access to care and in 

managing that care, and health centers, are an important cog in 

the or better health care system that you are trying to build. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think it is important to state for the record that 

if you don’t have mental health, you don’t have health, and I really 

appreciate your emphasis on that. Since I have a brother who is 

a dentist, thanks for including them, too. 

Senator KOHL. Senator KOHL. Go ahead. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Greg. We appreciate 

the great model that Wisconsin is, and not just the Senator sitting 

over here, but in so many fields, but particularly in medicine. It is 

something of a trailblazer just like Oregon, and so we admire that 

very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Nycz follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Turning to Oregon, David Ford, thank you. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID FORD, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CAREOREGON, PORTLAND, OR 

Mr. FORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Kohl. It seems 

like there is a lot of simpatico across the issues here. 

My name is David Ford. I am the president and CEO of 

CareOregon, in Portland. I would like to focus my remarks pretty 

much on Medicaid and the SSI population, the blind, disabled and 

aged, because in a lot of states that isn’t a covered benefit but we 

have been doing that in Oregon for 10 years, as well as in Maryland and a number of other States, but it is not widespread. 

Because we are fully capitated and the capitation often doesn’t 

keep up with medical inflation, we are driven to be innovative and 

take things and look at things in different ways with our benefit 

partners. One aspect of that is care management of the complex 

member. We are defining the complex member as the person that 

doesn’t have just one disease, such as diabetes, they have got a 

heart condition, high blood pressure, and they may have some 

problems with their feet. 

These are people with four or more comorbid conditions, and one 

of the issues that was brought up previously is focusing on where 

the dollars are spent. We found that in our 100,000 members 

across the state, 3 percent of the people use 30 percent of the services. That is an area that we have intensly focused on. We have 

grants from the Center for Health Care Strategies to develop methodologies working with our highest needs members. 

Our view is if we can take people that are not well connected to 

either the medical system or the social system, add more services, 

not cut services, but add more services, we can actually stabilize 

them and manage them into a more chronic care state which is 

much more stabilized, and they use less services. 

Before I came to Oregon 3 years ago, I ran Medicaid HMO here 

in Medicaid in the District and Maryland. The remarkable thing 

that I found to Oregon was the different SSI use of hospital services in Maryland compared with Oregon. After 2 years in Maryland, we dropped the hospital utilization rate from 2,300 days per 

1,000 to 1,900 days per 1,000. That means for every 1,000 people, 

there were 1,900 days of hospitalization. In Oregon, we started 

with a base of 1,300 for the same matched population and dropped 

it to 1,000 days per thousand. 

So the question is there: Why a 900 days-per-thousand difference 

between Oregon and Maryland for that same population? There are 

some reasons for it, but the question when I got to Oregon was how 

do you go from 1,000 days per thousand down to 800, and the issue 

really became looking at a framework for quality. 

I think we are overlooking a lot of the work that we have done 

nationally at the Institute of Medicine. They published a book 

about 5 years ago called Crossing the Quality Chasm. In that, they 

have a number of explanations of why the health care system today 

is failing, and then recommendations, and actually a blueprint 

under that—and that is commented on in my amplification in the 

slides—about where to go. 

64

We don’t have to go all over. The concerns about quality and improving quality while creating more efficient health care is right 

before us and this model. So that blueprint is something that as 

you develop your rhetoric and work with your staff, we would consider you looking at. 

A Johns Hopkins professor-doctor who has been doing work there 

for her whole career, Barbara Starfield, has done a lot of studies 

about when you have multiple conditions with four or more comorbid conditions, the complexity of care goes up and the cost just 

skyrockets. Things are out of control when we don’t provide services. 

In the previously mentioned grant that we have received, we 

have done pilots over the last 3 years with our complex members. 

We are in the beginning of the third year. The first year, we set 

up nurse care management for our complex members and did a lot 

of care coordination. We saved about $5,000 per member a year on 

a matched study. In the second year, we saved $6,000 per member 

a year. 

One problem that we ran into with this program is a backdrop 

of this entire discussion—not enough trained medical professionals. 

To address this, we have evolved the model to a team-based approach where we have a social worker with a behavioral specialist, 

a nurse team leader, and two medical assistants helping coordinate 

care so that we can have a higher touch and broader reach. There 

is a huge demand for coordinating services, but we have got to find 

an economical way to reach out effectively. 

It is not the care that people receive that is driving the cost of 

health care; it is the care that they don’t receive. This is counterintuitive to the last generation of managed care where you put 

gatekeepers and road bumps between the patient and getting care. 

We are saying that is passe. We have got to get aggressive about 

knocking down barriers to services. 

The CHAIRMAN. That has saved you money? 

Mr. FORD. Hands down, no question about it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Is that generally recognized among your competitor——

Mr. FORD. We have got 12 plans in Oregon, all local, and absolutely that is recognized. It is also the realization that it isn’t just 

clinical services. A lot of services are provided by family members 

and others. So partly what we are looking at now is dialoguing 

with Intel, which has a digital care unit, around creating some software to integrate and create collaborative working systems for people who are very complex so that you can integrate between what 

the family is seeing and doing the care managers, the people in the 

community settings, so that the medical records, with privacy, are 

shared. 

We can’t coordinate and articulate this care if we can’t see it and 

work together, and one of the failings of our system is it is so fragmented. We are seeing the opportunity to integrate care through 

effective software opportunities and we are beginning to experiment and dialog with that, until Intel announced its big layoffs. 

This is not by any means a doomsday kind of scenario. The problem that was articulated by the Institute of Medicine in their book 

To Err Is Human is that healthcare is unsafe, it is fragmented, it 

65

is inefficient, it is slow, it is inequitable. In Crossing the Quality 

Chasm, they come up with a series of solutions that prescribe how 

we get safe care, how we create efficient care, equitable and so 

forth. It is up to us to follow through on this blueprint we have developed, and care will go up in quality and it is better care and it 

costs less and it is more humane from my perspective. 

The CHAIRMAN. David, how would you address the rural issue? 

Mr. FORD. I think there needs to be more collaboration. We are 

involved in that now. Understanding there are manpower shortages, and there are maldistributions of workforce, I think you can 

integrate specialty care through what you saw in Roseberg in 

terms of some availability of technology. I think that we need to 

invest in manpower and dedicate financial incentives for caregivers 

to go to rural regions, because they do get burned out. 

There are ways to integrate the system more effectively through 

capitation. I have done some work in Australia and Finland around 

the community taking responsibility for the care. I think we 

haven’t put the dedicated effort like Tony was saying, into developing an expertise to do this. This is— a means problem, as well 

as lack of focus to actually do the work to create integrated systems. 

We are not really using the words ‘‘managed care’’ as much anymore. We are really talking about—and I would like the roundtable 

to consider something like ‘‘managed collaboration.’’ Through software, through collaborative work, through driven people, we don’t 

have to leave everything a free-for-all and, you know, here is some 

money and it is up to you to negotiate your way through this difficult high-tech endeavor. We have got ways to collaborate with our 

members to articulate care much more effectively. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Institute of Medicine—what is the name of 

this——

Mr. FORD. Crossing the Quality Chasm is the book. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you had one recommendation as we try to develop legislation, we should go look at that book? 

Mr. FORD. I would defer to Ron, but I think that a lot of us here 

would feel like that framework has a lot of backbone that we can 

flesh out further to come up with more explicit——

The CHAIRMAN. The provider community understands what they 

are saying and they respect it and they agree with it? 

Mr. FORD. We actually took a study delegation to Alaska to look 

at some advanced primary care reform practice that the Native 

Alaskan health services are doing in Anchorage. It was knock-yoursocks-off exciting in terms of how they have created team care and 

services, adding behavioral health at the point of service for people, 

and it was all based on this fundamental framework laid out in 

Crossing the Quality Chasm. They have been working with the Institute for Health Care Improvement for 15 years. This is not a 

new idea. It is just that it is not in the pair community very well 

and it is for some reason not incorporated as heavily into policy as 

it might be. 

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kohl, do you have any questions? 

Senator KOHL. No. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ford follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Dan. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL O. HILFERTY, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AMERIHEALTH MERCY AND KEYSTONE MERCY HEALTH PLANS, PHILADELPHIA, PA 

Mr. HILFERTY. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Senator Kohl. 

I appreciate being here today. I represent AmeriHealth Mercy 

Health Plan, based in Philadelphia. I also have the good fortune of 

being the Vice Chairman of the Medicaid Health Plans of America. 

MHPA is our Washington-based interest group and trade association, and with us today is our president, Thomas Johnson, who 

does a great job for us here on the Hill. 

On behalf of my colleagues in Philadelphia, I really appreciate 

the opportunity to be with you today. The one good thing, coming 

last in such an august group like this, is I found myself learning 

a lot, but I also found myself checking off a number of the things 

that have already been said that I don’t want to repeat. 

The CHAIRMAN. But not everybody has said them, so go ahead. 

Mr. HILFERTY. That is right. I am going to try to do it. 

First of all, I would like to, on behalf of our association, thank 

the both of you for the leadership that you have provided in really 

bringing the discussion of Medicaid to the forefront. The bipartisan 

commission has gone a long way to making the discussion of Medicaid policy and Medicaid reform a household discussion. I find that 

for the first time my family and friends actually know what I do 

because they are reading about Medicaid on a regular basis. 

Our organization and its affiliates work in 16 States. We managed the care in some way, shape or form for about 2 million Medicaid recipients. We have 23 years of experience in the industry 

and we are very proud of what we have learned. We feel that we 

really know the medical assistance population. 

We started out basically working with the TANF population and 

the SSI population. Over time, States have moved more with their 

managed care models toward the aged, blind and disabled, and we 

have had an opportunity to really learn a lot about that business. 

What I would like to do is I would like to move off of my prepared 

remarks and focus on that more expensive population. 

First, I would like to say I really agree with what Ron said about 

if you have a quality product, efficiencies might follow. I would adjust that slightly and say quality definitely leads to efficiency. Then 

I would like to focus on what David said about a small portion of 

the population eating up the large bulk of the dollars for care. We 

have found that with the aged, blind and disabled, those with 

chronic diseases, those with multiple chronic diseases, roughly 20 

percent of our membership utilizes 80 percent of our costs. So you 

think of the disparity there. 

So here we are as managed care spending a lot of time traditionally, the traditional denying care or making sure people get pre-authorization. Well, what we are saying is if we shift focus to coordinating care across the whole population base, but focus on that 20 

percent, not only will we provide a higher level of quality of care 

for those individuals and their quality of life will improve, but efficiencies will be there as well. 

85

So I would like to focus on—and I have this in here—I would like 

to focus on one of our programs. We really decided that if we were 

going to be effective, if we were going to survive and the State’s 

ability and the Federal Government’s ability to fund these programs decreases, we had to really shift from a gatekeeper perspective to more of a care coordination perspective. 

We developed a program called PerforMED, which is an intensive 

case and disease management program, and we decided to look at 

those disease states that were really costing us. We identified them 

by category, then more specifically by member, and we put in aggressive case management, one-on-one regular dialog with the 

member, regular interaction with not only the primary care physician, but the specialist community. 

David makes an excellent point. The key way to do that—and we 

talk about having real-time data in front of everybody so that you 

have got not only the managed care organization, you have got the 

provider, you have got the patient, you have got other organizations that interact with that member and their disease state. When 

everybody has real data, you make collaborative decisions, and we 

believe that collaborative decisions are usually better for the member and more efficient. 

We have a program that I focus on in my written remarks that 

I would just like to comment on and it deals with juvenile asthma. 

We are seeing in our membership in many of our States that asthma is increasing dramatically across the board, and mainly in 

young people. So we started a program called Healthy Hoops. We 

saw that many of these children with asthma weren’t participating 

in any athletics, dance, other activities. They were on the sidelines. 

So we decided to put a program together where we would teach 

them basketball, but what we said was we have got to get the clinicians involved and we have got to get the providers involved. We 

formed a coalition. It isn’t our program; it is the asthma coalitions 

in the regions in which we do it. We decided that we would teach 

them basketball, but in order for them to participate—it was more 

or less a carrot/stick thing—their parent and/or guardian had to 

participate in the program as well. So it was part classroom and 

part fun and games with local basketball legends who taught them 

the game of basketball. 

What we found is that the parents were enthused about this program. They came on a regular basis. They learned about the children’s meds, they learned about the need for nutrition, they 

learned about how to use the inhaler, what the problems are with 

the inhaler. They really got a grasp of the disease that they were 

dealing with. We felt that this put these children at an advantage 

where they could overcome some of the obstacles that they had. 

The fun of it is they have learned basketball. We have done it 

Philadelphia and we have done it in South Carolina. We are next 

doing it here in Washington, DC, and in Florida, in Broward County. 

What are the results? The proof is always in the pudding. The 

results for us really show what has happened. The 2004 class—and 

the problem with it is each class is only about 500 children, so you 

have got to really expand it to have a national impact. But with 

that class of 2004, we found there was a 70-percent reduction in 

86

emergency visits. That is significant. There was roughly a 13-percent decrease in use of emergency medications, which is pretty significant as well. We also found that once they got involved in the 

program, they were hooked on it for life. 

So what I am saying is you take all the points that we have 

made across the board and if the quality is there and you focus on 

individual high-cost disease states and set up comprehensive, aggressive outreach and education programs, it leads to a higher 

quality of life, improved health status and, finally, efficiency, which 

we all know has got to be a key part of a program. 

In closing, I would just like to say that the bipartisan commission—and you were talking about some program and you were saying, I think, only this group and a small group gets excited about 

the things that go on in Medicaid. But I was excited about the bipartisan commission. I really enjoyed hearing about the different 

perspectives. Well, out of the work of the bipartisan commission 

and Congress’ deliberations in the past year, we are looking at $10 

billion, roughly, in savings over the next 5 years in the program. 

Well, MHPA sponsored a study by the Lewin Group which really 

shows that if managed care is implemented across the country for 

Medicaid recipients, whether it is a mandate or incentive-based, to 

get States to really move toward managed care models, the savings 

are roughly about $83 billion over the next 10 years. So what I am 

saying is it is not just about the dollars, but if you build those programs that focus on that 20 percent of the population—I am not 

saying ignore the other 80 percent; they have needs as well—but 

truly focus on those high-cost populations and do it in a quality 

way where the State monitors, measures and is involved in the 

process, you are going to get a higher quality of life. You are going 

to have folks who—there is a certain dignity around the way they 

are receiving their care and the program is going to be far more 

efficient. I am a believer in it, I get excited about it, and I ask you 

to really consider going in that direction. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hilferty follows:]

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dan. I wonder if in this 

basketball program you have, if any of these kids are of sufficient 

talent that the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks ought to keep his 

eye on them. 

Mr. HILFERTY. Well, maybe. I don’t know, Senator, but I was 

going to talk to Senator Kohl. I would like to be a general manager 

someday. [Laughter.] 

The CHAIRMAN. You operate in enough States. Do you have a 

perspective on the rural question that we began with? 

Mr. HILFERTY. Yes, and I would just put a different slant on 

Tony’s point. I thought Tony made the key point that it is about 

having a provider network; even though the distance between the 

various providers is longer, have a provider network that is under 

a cap system that is incentivized to really be part of the Medicaid 

program. 

Then from our vantage point, much like we reach out to the populations that I discussed, the managed care entities have to have 

a program that overcomes the obstacles—once you have the provider network in place, that overcomes the obstacles to get people 

needed care. Sometimes that is transportation, sometimes it is the 

time of day that a physician or a clinic might be open for them to 

visit for care. 

I guess what I am saying is if the States focus with the managed 

care plans on setting up the network of having adequate funding 

for the clinicians and they know they are going to get that funding, 

they will be supportive of the program. Then it is incumbent upon 

the plans, with oversight by the States, to make sure that those 

members get introduced on a regular basis, are educated on a regular basis, and overcome the obstacles to access that care. 

The CHAIRMAN. Obviously, I think we have here people who run 

plans and programs that are very successful and are providing 

quality care, and also winning efficiencies and cost savings. But, 

obviously, you can’t please everybody. There has got to be occasionally a patient who is just unhappy with an outcome, with a denial 

or whatever, and I wonder if perhaps Arizona can speak to that, 

and David and Dan. What recourse do your patients have if they 

don’t like what you have done? 

Mr. FORD. There is a whole structured call-in process and a 

grievance process that we are required to provide, and there is a 

fair hearing process by the State if it were to get to that level. But 

the other thing that we do is we have data that allows us to look 

at the continuity of care. We look at bad outcomes and we go to 

the hospital and the other providers and work on behalf of the patients around improved care. 

But in the open system, nobody looks at that on the back side 

of that and we have committees of doctors from the community 

that look at adverse outcomes and we do remediation. We actually 

are now using this Institute of Medicine and the Institute of Health 

Care Improvements guidelines and we are saying this appears to 

be a problem with your drug reconciliation. Do you have a program? Here is what is going on. They often get back. 

We talked actually last week about is that response back just 

sort of a paper response or will we look back in 6 months and say 

you said you would do this and then we would begin auditing that 

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kind of thing. We are all in favor of accountability. The burden of 

accountability is on us because there is no other place to get it. 

Mr. HILFERTY. Senator, if you do Medicaid in one State, you do 

Medicaid in one State. I mean, each State has different ways of approaching it. Interestingly enough, we think as a plan that it is a 

benefit to keep a member in your plan for at least a year so that 

you can impact their health status. The flip side of that is some 

governments say, well, really, a member should have the right to 

opt out and move to another plan at any point. 

What I would like to suggest is there is a happy medium there. 

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the plans don’t market. 

There is a benefit consultant who works with an incoming member 

and helps them decide what is the best network for them, what is 

the best plan for them, and they choose that plan. That has worked 

very well because people coming in feel comfortable, seem to have 

less complaints and are ready to access the care of the plan. 

On the flip side, there are folks that have the right to opt out 

of a plan and move to a competitor if they are not satisfied, if they 

exhaust all of the opportunities to really grieve or whatever it 

might be over care. So we believe that we can have a happy medium where we spend a lot of time up front educating members 

about what they will get from a particular plan and competition is 

good, No. 1, but No. 2, not make it so that a member can jump 

from plan to plan every month or every 3 months or even every 6 

months, but build a period of time where a plan can really work 

aggressively with that member, with that family to make sure they 

are getting the services that they need to get. When that happens, 

there seems to be less complaints. 

Mr. POLLACK. Mr. Chairman, can I add a few things? 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. 

Mr. POLLACK. I think there are several things that are important. First, I think there needs to be a coordination of grievance 

systems between Medicare and Medicaid so that people don’t fall 

through the cracks or have contrary systems for dealing with problems. 

The CHAIRMAN. There is none now? 

Mr. POLLACK. It is not adequate and we need much more adequate coordination. 

The CHAIRMAN. Would that be done through CMS? 

Mr. POLLACK. Yes. 

Second, since this is a low-income population, to the extent any 

benefits might be withdrawn, there needs to be continued benefits 

during the pendency of a grievance claim. This is a fundamental 

right. It is actually something that was, in a different context, 

ruled on by the Supreme Court in the 1960’s. 

Third, I think it is critically important to have some help available to people. I mentioned ombudsmen before. Some people call 

them different names, but we need some people who can be of assistance to an individual. Remember, when benefits are potentially 

being terminated or reduced, the person is actually in some significant need of health care and they themselves may not be in the 

best position to deal with the problem. So they need some kind of 

help. 

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So I think those kinds of systems need to be in place, and then 

there is a matter of fundamental fairness: If there is a denial of 

certain services by a plan and you have gone through the internal 

grievance process, there needs to be, as part of this coordinated 

plan, an external system where the person making the decision 

was not involved in the original decision and has competence in 

that area of medical judgment. 

The CHAIRMAN. Did you have anything to add to that, Tony? 

Mr. RODGERS. Mr. Chairman, the process that we use starts with 

the health plan. One, they have to notify the beneficiary why they 

are denying care by sending them a letter that says this is a service we are not approving, et cetera. So that is the first place typically a beneficiary may learn about a denial of care, and that happens whether it is a benefit denial or there is a feeling that the 

services aren’t required, et cetera, and that starts the process. 

The health plan is the first level that we expect the dialog to 

occur, typically with the physician and the health plan. If the member is still not satisfied, we review the case and we have a unit 

that does that advocacy for the member, validating that we agree 

with the health plan. But, ultimately, they still have the right to 

go to a State fair hearing, where there is an administrative law 

judge. In those cases where we have a policy that our plans are following that they are challenging, that is typically what goes to the 

State fair hearing, where they are challenging the policies of the 

State. 

So we do have this tiered process and what it does is it informs 

us on what the issues of our beneficiaries are. This is a very important part of how we actually improve our programs, and the best 

health plans are using that data to actually create either better 

networks or better understanding with their physicians, et cetera. 

We also allow the physicians to grieve. They can grieve a health 

plan, as well. So there are a number of ways that beneficiaries 

have their rights protected in our system. 

The CHAIRMAN. Does anyone else have a comment? 

Mr. CROWLEY. Just very briefly, I want to echo what Ron said. 

I think he got it right. I think it is important that most of what 

we are talking about is a sort of formal appeals system. For beneficiaries that often works well if they have a legal advocate, but we 

know most people don’t have that. So I think we need to think 

more about ways that people can have an alternative without sacrificing their rights to really work with their doctors. 

I can’t point to this as a huge success, but in the Medicare Modernization Act there is this new exceptions process. While there 

have been problems implementing it, one thing that is attractive is 

that it is really meant to be an initial first step that is less formal 

than a formal appeal, where working with your doctor you can resolve some of these things. Most people don’t have lawyers and 

they are sick and so they don’t want to deal with it, but if there 

is an easier way, we could resolve some of these without requiring 

five steps of appeals and lawyers and everything else. 

The CHAIRMAN. That may be a good model, then. 

Mr. CROWLEY. Potentially, or learn lessons for how to improve 

upon it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Greg, do you have a comment? 

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Mr. NYCZ. Well, more or less getting back to the rural issue, if 

you think about community health centers as being able to help 

work with the community to set up a clinic in a rural town that 

didn’t have doctors, maybe didn’t have mental health providers—

you leverage health centers to create the infrastructure in that 

town that will help enable some of the managed care activities. 

I look at it as a one-two punch. Where we have workforce issues, 

community health centers have been shown to stabilize and or create practices. I would note that it isn’t even just in rural areas. In 

some inner-city areas that have seen a mass exodus of private doctors, you need to go back in there and set up that primary care infrastructure that is central to good care management. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, gentlemen, this is the first in a series of 

roundtables or square tables that I am going to do because I am 

very earnest about pursuing this as one of the ways to preserve 

Medicaid. So let me simply thank you for your time and your talents that you have shared with us today. We have taken it all 

down and you have certainly increased my understanding and I am 

going to do my level best to reflect that in creating new American 

law to strengthen, not weaken, Medicaid. 

So this not being a formal hearing, I won’t adjourn it, but just 

thank you very much, and have a very good day. 

[Whereupon, at 11:30 p.m., the Roundtable was concluded.]

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