We should all thank Audrey Dutton for her extensive reporting on the Idaho Health Data Exchange as it continues to prove to us the incompetency of Idaho’s Health and Welfare Department. We have been calling for an audit of this Bureaucratic behemoth for several years, but it appears that no one in the political arena wants to tackle the many problems that have been and still are festering in this quagmire of mismanagement.
We draw your attention to the referendum to accept Medicaid Expansion in Idaho in 2018 and how the cost of this program has morphed into a giant vacuum sucking tax dollars out of Idaho faster than they can increase property taxes. We wrote about this problem and the mistakes made in the estimated cost projections and ballooning enrollment in a Gem State article in April of this year.
Read it here: https://gemstatepatriot.com/blog/will-medicaid-expansion-bankrupt-idaho/
Our real concern is not if but when the federal government will cut their portion of this funding as they not going to be able to continue borrowing at their current rate forever. I assure you that there are very few in our state government that have considered this problem. When it comes to fruition you can bet, they will all deny they had anything to do with implementing and supporting it. Of the 450,000 Medicaid and expansion recipients DHW says 300,000 are eligible but there are 150,000 who either don’t qualify for benefits or haven’t been in contact with DHW. That’s one-third of the recipients who are potentially ineligible but what are they doing about it?
It was earlier this year that Rep. John Vander Woude (R-Nampa) introduced House Bill 123 in the House Health and Welfare Committee which aimed to repeal Idaho’s Medicaid expansion program. The expansion program was originally estimated to cost $400 million but soon ballooned to 1 billion. About 140,000 Idahoans are enrolled in Medicaid under expanded eligibility. Most of the roughly $1 billion Medicaid expansion budget covers pharmacy expenses, such as drug costs. This bill failed to pass in committee in a 7 to 5 vote. Just for kicks, we did some math to see how much drugs cost per person of those on the Medicaid Expansion plan. When we took 1 billion and dived it by 140,000, we get $7,143 per person for drugs. I for one would like to know how many of our legislators have received political contributions from the pharmaceutical companies and the various Idaho medical associations. My bet is that most of them have been receiving funds for a number of years. Our question to Idaho Health and Welfare is why nearly all of the Medicaid expansion funds are being spent on drugs. Aren’t they able to negotiate with the drug companies to lower the cost of these medications since they are dealing in such large quantities?
More recently as reported by Audrey Dutton our Idaho Health Data Exchange filed for bankruptcy owing $4 million to creditors. This is a small organization which operates a massive database of patient information on Idahoans. It is a nonprofit exchange financed through the Idaho Health and Welfare Dept. which received millions in funds from the HITECH Act of 2009 which expired last year. This Idaho Health Data Exchange received 5.9 million dollars of federal funding in 2010 and millions more each year through IDHW. Why did they go bankrupt?
We suggest that you read the story by Audrey Dutton in the Idaho Capital Sun Here: https://idahocapitalsun.com/2023/06/28/what-happened-to-the-idaho-health-data-exchange-and-can-other-states-learn-from-it/
This is one more reason that we need an audit of our Health and Welfare Dept. The IDHW budget for fiscal year 2023 is over 4 billion dollars and it appears that whatever the Department of Health and Welfare ask for they get. State funding for Medicaid for 2023 amounts to $830 million, or about 20% of the overall budget. That’s an increase of $60.3 million or 7.8% compared to 2022. There seems to be no end in sight to the rising cost of pharmaceuticals and medical care. Idaho’s Medicaid budget has doubled since 2015 but we don’t hear any outrage from our legislators as they just keep on voting to give IDHW more money each and every year. This is the problem with bureaucracies they just grow unabated like a cancer that is out of control when no one is checking to see how and where they are spending our money. If you think the federal government is going to be able to finance these programs at their current rate forever just look at the fact that we are over 32 trillion in debt now and that number continues to grow. It is time for a forensic audit of Idaho’s Dept of Health and Welfare and while we are at it how about doing an audit of our State Department of Education who just gave the ok for the U of I to purchase Phoenix University with bonds for over $500 million.
Read the article here: https://gemstatepatriot.com/blog/u-of-i-purchases-university-of-phoenix/
These two agencies suck up most of Idaho’s budget and it is time we took a hard look at how they have been spending our taxpayer dollars. “We get the Government We Deserve.”
