The move to privatize Medicaid in Iowa officially started on April 1st.

District 24 State Senator Jerry Behn is in favor of the change and says the one of the main reasons is because Medicaid payments that the state was making to the federal government were skyrocketing, due to the increasing amount of people on Medicaid. He explains another reason why lawmakers pushed for the change.

“The average Medicaid patient has four chronic conditions, sees five different physicians and sees six different prescribers. When you juggle that for over 500,000 individuals in the state, you can see that can lead to a fragmentation.”

Behn says by using a privatization system, it will hopefully reduce the amount of emergency room visits and provide better quality of care, which in turn will help the Managed Care Organizations.

“Quite frankly, I think there’s just more motivation to be sure that individuals get healthy. That’s the way they’re going to make money. That just makes sense to me and I just think there could be some efficiencies there.”

Behn adds that they are projecting the state could save as much as $100 million per fiscal year by not having to pay for Medicaid.