MCOs to Pay for Prescription Delivery Beginning June 1, 2012 Effective June 1, 2012, Medicaid and CHIP Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) will begin paying local pharmacies to deliver pharmaceuticals to clients. Each MCO will develop its own participating pharmacy network for this delivery service. Pharmacies interested in receiving payment for the delivery of pharmaceuticals should contact their MCOs to request information on how to apply. The Vendor Drug Program website has several managed care expansion resources for pharmacies. Please refer to the Enrollment Chart for the pharmacy contract phone number for each MCO.
HHSC Specialty Drug List The Vendor Drug Program has posted the Specialty Drug List. More information about the specialty drug list is available on the Vendor Drug website.
Medicaid Spending Growing Faster than Texas Taxes Texas' share for providing health care to poor children, the impoverished elderly and the disabled is growing faster than tax revenues to pay for services, creating another state budget challenge next year, top agency officials told lawmakers Monday. Texas' Medicaid director Billy Millwee told lawmakers that his program will likely achieve only 88 percent of the cost savings forecast in the current budget. Experts had warned lawmakers last year that they were underfunding the Medicaid program by $4.8 billion, an amount lawmakers will have to make up when they meet again next year. -- Read Article
Democratic Texas Senators Question Medicaid Cuts Democratic state senators Tuesday questioned whether cuts in Medicaid could lead to a shortage of doctors willing to treat the poor, elderly and disabled. El Paso Sen. Jose Rodriguez said he was worried whether the state will have enough doctors willing to participate in the program. “Back in El Paso, I hear it all the time from people saying that because of these rate cuts that it is affecting access to health care, people are scaling down their Medicaid patient load,” he said. But State Medicaid Director Billy Millwee said that, so far, the data his agency has collected shows no impact on the availability of doctors. “Are there providers who say they will not take Medicaid anymore? We hear that, but we don’t see that in our data,” he said. -- Read Article
