Our community’s health is at stake as Medicaid crisis grows
By KONNIE MARTIN and JANIA ARNOLD, Alamosa Valley Courier
Over the last 15 years, Colorado voters and policymakers have prioritized health care coverage and access. We have worked together to ensure our neighbors could get the care they need when they need it. Our health care system is far from perfect, but Colorado’s progress has been undeniable.
Sadly, administrative failures in the Medicaid program over the last year have put that progress in jeopardy and created real hardship for Coloradans and our communities. We are now counting on our state partners in the Polis Ad-ministration and the General Assembly to step up in the next legislative session to strengthen Medicaid and support health care safety net providers.
More than half a million Coloradans – 575,605 to be specific – have lost Medicaid coverage in the wake of the CO-VID crisis. Shockingly, more than half of those Coloradans lost coverage for administrative reasons, not eligibility reasons – meaning that they are still entitled to Medicaid benefits but aren’t getting them.
But losing Medicaid doesn’t make health care needs disappear. Instead, it means people are forced to delay or defer care or seek services with significant financial hardship.
We recently heard the story of one SLV Health patient who was receiving consistent medical and behavioral health therapy and managing her chronic condition successfully until she lost her Medicaid coverage. She stopped com-ing in for her routine treatments and within just a few months her condition regressed. Eventually she presented to our emergency department and required an extended inpatient stay to get her health back on track. The saddest part of this story is that it never should have happened. This patient did, in fact, qualify for Medicaid and she did, ultimately, get her coverage back – but not before it took a serious toll on her health and cost our system an expensive inpatient stay due to the lapse in coverage.
This is not an isolated incident. To the contrary, it is one of many stories we hear too often about Medicaid dis-enrollment that has harmed the health of our patients and threatened the financial stability of our organization. At Valley-Wide we have heard of count-less accounts of patients not knowing they were disenrolled from Medicaid, until they needed access to healthcare services. Patients have shared that they did not receive reenrollment packages, or they turned them in and have not heard back. In addition, patients los-ing Medicaid, many times are unable to access other insurance due to the dead-lines not corresponding to the date that they lost Medicaid, the Exchange is an example of this. Not only has the process for reenrolling individuals and families failed Colorado there are so many administrative burdens to getting enrolled and staying enrolled on Medicaid, that it has made it virtually impossible for many Coloradans to complete the process.
At SLV Health, Medicaid has consistently been 30 percent of our revenue for the past five years. This year that declined by 7 percent. Commercial insurance remains steady at 24 percent of our payor mix. However, our charity care has increased by over 200 percent. Every lost Medicaid dollar has shifted to uncompensated care. This has resulted in nearly a $3.5 million revenue loss to our organization in the last year. Valley-Wide has experienced similar losses in Medicaid, with only a slight increase in private insurance and more of an in-crease in uninsured individuals.
Whether or not you or your loved one relies on Medicaid, you have a stake in this issue because if we don’t solve this crisis, it will impact SLV Health and Valley-Wide’s ability to serve the whole community. SLV Health plays a critical role in the health care infrastructure, serving 50,000 residents in the six-county region. SLV Health is a Level III Trauma Center and is the only hospital that provides surgical and obstetrics services for 120 miles in any direction. Valley-Wide serves 14 counties in Southern Colorado, all of which are rural or frontier counties, providing essential Community Health Center and Community Mental Health Center services to these communities.
While these numbers are specific to SLV Health and Valley-Wide, we know that our peers and colleagues running rural hospitals, federally qualified health centers and community mental health centers across Colorado have similar stories to tell. In fact, many of us gathered in Denver in October to tell those stories to our lawmakers and to impress upon them the urgency of this crisis. We’re all facing difficult choices just to keep our doors open and to serve our communities in the face of this Medicaid disenrollment crisis.
We can’t fix this alone. We need help from our policymakers. We know that the state budget is tight and that lawmakers will be facing difficult choices to balance the budget this year. But stabilizing the health care safety net and helping to re-enroll Medicaid eligible Coloradans into coverage must be a top priority for the year ahead. Konnie Martin is the Chief Executive Officer of San Luis Valley Health. Jania Arnoldi is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Valley-Wide Health Systems.
WRITE THEM
■ GOVERNORGovernor Jared Polis (D), State Capitol Building Room 136, 200 East Colfax, Denver CO 80203; (303) 866-2471; Fax (303) 866-2003.
■STATE HOUSEMatthew Martinez (D), Colorado State Representative, District 62, 200 E Colfax, Room 307, Denver, CO 80203; phone: 303-866-2916; email:matthew.martinez.house@coleg.gov
■STATE SENATECleave Simpson (R), Colorado State Senator, District 35, 200 E Colfax RM 346 Denver, CO 80203Phone: 303-866-4875 cleave.simpson.senate@coleg.gov
■U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVESLauren Boebert (R) Pueblo Office: 503 N. Main, Suite 426, Pueblo, CO 81003 (719) 696-6970; Washington Office: 1609 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515Phone: (202) 225-4761Fax: (202) 226-9669; Contact: https://boebert.house.gov/
■U.S. SENATEMichael Bennet (D) SLV Regional Office: 609 Main Street, Suite 110, Alamosa 81101; Phone: 587-0096; Fax: 587-0098; Washington office: 458 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington DC 20510; DC Phone: 202-224-5852; Contact: bennet.senate.gov John Hickenlooper (D) Washington office: B85 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510(202) 224-5941 Contact: www.hickenlooper.senate.gov