Doctors warn of emergency created by Medicaid cuts

AUSTIN (AP) — Doctors visiting the Capitol are warning lawmakers that their cuts to the Medicaid program are creating a health care emergency for the elderly poor.

Members of the Texas Medical Association on Tuesday said budget cuts in 2011 hurt people known as dual-eligibles. These are people old enough to qualify for Medicare and poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

In 2011, lawmakers stopped Medicaid from paying the $140 Medicare deductible for these people and reduced the amount of money paid to doctors for providing services. The Medicaid cut affected 320,000 elderly.

Lawmakers restored the deductibles in 2013, but are still reimbursing doctors at a lower rate. The cuts forced many doctors to stop accepting patients who rely on Medicaid and Medicare. Doctors want lawmakers to fully restore the payments.

Appearing on Sunday's edition of KXAN's "In Session, In-Depth," TMA President-elect Stephen Brotherton said that programs like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers youngsters in low-income working families, pay physicians only a fraction of the cost of providing care, Brotherton said.

"So if you don't have a mix of patients," he said, "you're going to go broke."

Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Kyle Janek, also on Sunday's program praised the efforts of legislative budget-writers to find savings in Medicaid, a federal-state program that pays health care costs mostly for children and expectant mothers who are living in poverty. But, he said, the budget-writers are facing a huge task.

"We have to sort of change the way we approach Medicaid -- its funding and the services we provide -- or it will chew up the rest of the budget," said Janek, a Republican from the Houston area who served in both the House and the Senate in the 1990s and 2000s.