Should Some Services Be Carved Out of Managed Care?

From the New Hampshire Watchdog.org's Grant Bosse, Lead Investigator for the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank based in Concord, NH.
 
CONCORD, N.H. -- The New Hampshire Executive Council this week put off voting on a $2.2 billion contract to bring managed care to the state’s Medicaid program. Over the next month, they need to determine which Medicaid services would be cost-effective under managed care, and which should be left alone. There will be no easy answers, but perhaps the toughest question will be whether to include services for people with developmental disabilities.

New Hampshire to Inform Those Who May Lose Services

CONCORD, N.H. -- State officials plan to tell people with developmental disabilities next month if they would lose their services under the state budget proposed by the House.
The budget significantly cuts spending on services for people with developmental disabilities, such as money to help make their homes accessible or to provide respite care that allows parents who are constantly with their children time to run errands or tend to other needs. Senate budget writers could insist on restoring some of the spending, but with little more than two months until the new fiscal year, state officials have already proposed tentative criteria to determine who would continue receiving services and who would be cut off.

Opinion: Return to Bad Old Days?

Another guest column - this time from the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire by Richard Cohen, who along with John MacIntosh represented the residents of Laconia State School and Bill Glahn the state defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in April 1978 and decided in 1981.

Thirty-one years ago this month, we opposed one another in representing the residents of the Laconia State School and the state in Garrity v. Gallen, the lawsuit challenging conditions at that institution and the lack of adequate, community-based services for people with developmental disabilities.
While the legal interests of our clients diverged, the parties agreed on goals of the lawsuit: to redress inhumane conditions, end years of segregation and develop a system that enabled individuals to live and thrive with supports in the community.
There were parents who were understandably fearful that if the institution closed, there would be no place for their sons or daughters to go. Fears lessened and virtually disappeared as community placements occurred, families saw that individuals were far better off in the community, and state officials pledged to maintain comprehensive community services.
The state's pledge to maintain a community system was based on legal mandates and the fundamental moral obligation of government to provide support to those who need it throughout their lives, an obligation that has transcended political forces in New Hampshire.
Three decades later, this pledge and the mandates from the Laconia lawsuit are threatened by the House budget bills which risk recreating the conditions that led to the suit.