Million of dollars in losses are being reported after the first quarter for the three Managed Care Organizations in Iowa after Medicaid was privatized.

Iowa Hospital Association Finance Policy Vice-President Dan Royer gave a presentation to the Greene County Medical Center Board of Trustees at their monthly meeting in August.

He says there are over 565,000 Iowans that are assigned to one of the three MCO’s including Amerigroup, AmeriHealth Caritas and United Healthcare. AmeriHealth has the most with over 202,000 patients. However, the first quarter finance report shows AmeriHealth is losing $40 million in Iowa alone and Amerigroup is projecting to lose $200 million annually, when their board said in January that they would only lose $50 million. United Healthcare doesn’t have an Iowa specific report. Chief Executive Officer Carl Behne tells Raccoon Valley Radio that he was surprised that the MCO’s are losing that much money.

“That’s significant. Something’s going to have to change with those figures because any business, whether you’re a non-for-profit or a completely for-profit institution that has shareholders like each one of these MCO’s do, they’re not going to want to sustain losses like that. They’re going to have to re-evaluate.”

Royer says Governor Branstad’s office doesn’t acknowledge that there is a problem with the Medicaid privatization process. Of the 39 states that have privatized Medicaid, each state averaged 24-36 months to prepare before rolling out the program and Iowa basically took two months. As of July 12th, there were $899 million in total claims made and only $3.4 million were paid through the MCO’s.

Behne says even though the MCO’s keep losing money, he wants to assure everyone that the medical center will continue to provide care for any patient on any of the Medicaid programs.