Medicaid cuts could thwart the reform of drug addiction – San Diego Union -Tribune

The County of San Diego would lose significant momentum in its multi -year quest to transform the treatment of substances consumption if the congress crosses the cups of the magnitude that certain speculations could soon occur.

This was the message sent Tuesday at a special meeting of the supervisor council in San Diego which highlighted current plans to move the region to a more prudent mode of care which has already increased the availability of treatment programs and care for people in crisis.

Convened by the chairman of the board of directors Terra Lawson-Rememer, Reunion sought to draw attention to the existing plans which would add around 16,000 “treatment slots” for those who fight against drug addiction by 2030. Already, said that the managers have worked on what the county called his “optimal service roads”, which led to approximately 5,100.

These investments said the executive, have already helped reduce the burden of local emergency services and can do more if they continue.

“Over the past five years, we have built a crisis and diversion services network that did not exist before,” said Luke Bergmann, Director of County Behavioral Health.

But, due to the restrictions in the fan of sources of funding that the county receives, Medicaid – called Medi -Cal in California – provides a share in accordance with income which can be spent for programs that deal with substance consumption disorders.

“Last year, Funding from Medi-Cal covered 70% of costs In our drug addiction system And although the details of the future orientations for the Medicaid program remain vague, the conference proposals are already on the table which would have a huge financial impact on the state of California, “said Bergmann.

“If they were adopted, the loss of funding from Medi-Cal would have training effects in all behavioral health programs in the County of San Diego.”

Lawson-Rememer, in the comments made after the conclusion of the meeting, said that it thought it was important to raise public awareness of substances consumption programs and the future for the future.

“If we have important changes in the federal funding environment in Medicaid, we will not be able to move forward with these objectives,” said Lawson-Remer.

We don’t know exactly what is the size of such cuts.

It was a question in Washington that a recent budgetary resolution which requests the energy and trade committee of the Chamber reduced $ 880 billion in spending until 2034 will include significant reductions in Medicaid, as it is a very large part of the organization’s overall credits program.

Laswon-Remer said that she thought that the reduction in medi-cali financing arriving specifically in the county of San Diego is likely to “reduce the funding of Medicaid in the county of San Diego by 33%”.

Asked later where she had obtained this figure, the supervisor cited a recent analysis of the research organization on public policies, Center for American Progress, which displayed an estimate of the possible losses of the Congress of the Congress “based on the previous proposals of the Republican Directorate of the Budget Budget Committee”.

Several cutting methods have been proposed, with an internal note obtained and published by the Politico.com political website indicating that 2.3 billions of dollars could be carried out by the national program by instituting “per capita” ceilings on the services and “the equalization of Medicaid payments for” valid adults “. The reduction in “correspondence” rates that the federal government uses with states is also on the list.

States must generally provide their own money in order to “reduce” the payments of the Federal Medicaid program, which covers nearly 80 million Americans, including around 950,000 in the County of San Diego. Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent organization for health care research, also recently explored another method proposed to reduce Medicaid spending: eliminate the rate of correspondence for states that have expanded the admissibility of the program under the Acts for Affordable Care. The federal government covers 90% of the cost of coverage of Americans who have acquired coverage through ACA, an initiative which, according to KFF, has brought about 20 million people to the national scale. California would lose around $ 129 billion in the next decade of Revenue Medi-Cal if this change was made, according to the analysis.

The county would be far from the only local entity affected. Local medical suppliers at all levels treat patients with medical coverage, and federal skilled health centers would likely be among the hardest because a large percentage of their overall treatment volume concerns patients with medical coverage.