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Healthcare Transport Program for Less Fortunate Faces Cuts
Our government's primary function is to provide education, housing, food and safety of the people. Healthcare should of course be part of that and is a battle we continue to fight despite being obvious to so many of us. Simply stated, government should provide for the common good. Let's discuss one such example which now stands at risk of ending.
....non-emergency medical transportation, or NEMT, the benefit is as old as Medicaid itself. It requires the transport of certain people to and from medical services like mental health counseling sessions, substance abuse treatment, dialysis, physical therapy, adult day care and, in Maddie's case, visits to specialists.
Republicans have vowed to roll back the benefits, cut federal funding and give states more power to eliminate services they consider unaffordable.
You likely have not heard of Medicaid's NEMT program nor personally know of anyone who uses it. However, it is a commonly used and VITAL program.
More than 1 in 5 Americans — about 74 million people — now rely on Medicaid to pay for their health care. That includes nearly 104 million NEMT trips each year....
Because medical transportation isn't typically covered by the commercial insurance plans most Americans use, it's unfamiliar to many people and could be seen as unnecessary, says Eliot Fishman, formerly a Medicaid official, now senior director of health policy for Families USA.... Fishman calls the transportation program "vital" not only for children with severe disabilities, but also for non-elderly, low-income adults.
Efforts to end the federal requirement to provide NEMT have failed thus far so instead, Trump's health officials are granting states waivers instead.
At least three states — Iowa, Indiana and Kentucky — have received federal waivers and extensions allowing them to cut Medicaid transportation services.
Critics of the cuts worry the trend will accelerate, leaving poor and sick patients with no way to get to medical appointments.
The impacts of are that our people do not receive the treatment they need, live worse lives, become less likely to contribute to society, and die!
In a 2014 survey of Medicaid users, CMS found that lack of transportation was the third-greatest barrier to care for adults with disabilities, with 12.2 percent of those patients reporting they couldn't get a ride to a doctor's office.
About 3.6 million Americans miss or delay non-emergency medical care each year because of transportation problems, according to a 2005 study published by the National Academy of Sciences.
That same study.... found that providing additional transportation is often cost-effective because patients who got to a health appointment stayed healthier.