Iowa is trying to get in on the DPC movement and it involves a Medicaid pilot program. Here is the summary:
- The Iowa Senate has given approval to a pilot program that would allow certain Medicaid members to participate in direct primary care agreements.
- Current estimates place the monthly payment for each participant between $50 and $150 per month. The bill now heads to the House for consideration.
There is not much information to predict whether this passes or not or will be successful or not if it does pass. I think Medicaid patients would do really well in a DPC system because they would get more time from the doctor to get their health issues controlled. There have to be stipulations from DPC docs, however:
- The Medicaid patient should have EBT cards that are just for the doctor. No one else.
- DPC docs cannot be billing the government and waiting for money. They would just swipe the cards.
- There cannot be ANY quality metrics. All proven NOT to work.
It’s pretty simple. If they try it this way and give it a year they will be able to see if it saves them money or not. They could use their own metrics to see if hospitalizations decreased, etc. The key is NOT adding any bureaucratic work to the DPC doc because that is why they left the system in the first place.
What are the odds they listen to me?
Yeah. Thought so.
I predict that this whole Medicaid pilot will be for DINOs and not real DPC docs.