Up here in D.C. with all my fellow health advocates  I’m getting lots of questions about how we organize our Medicaid program in NC.  Why?  Well last month the national consulting firm Milliman came out with a report that put savings from our state’s Medicaid Community Care of NC program at nearly $1 billion.  The savings comes from better coordinating care by assigning people to medical homes.  They get the primary and preventive care they need, stay out of the emergency room and hospital and, not incidentally stay healthier.  The is government working at its best.  To learn more about the history and structure of Community Care NC check out the national toolkit – many other states are doing so because they want to do the same thing.

I’m up in our nation’s capitol this week talking with health advocates from across the nation and I just got a chance to hear Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland speak about how his state is saving big money in Medicaid and improving care at the same time.  How?  Maryland changed the way it pays hospitals in its Medicaid program.  Hospitals that have patients with fewer complications get paid more.  The result was stunning.   Hospitals had an incentive not to do as many procedures as possible, but coordinate health care better so people are healthier.  Maryland has saved over $60 million and is saving more every year.  In NC estimates are that reforms like this could save us $15-$30 million in our Medicaid program – and improve care.

Now that’s the kind of smart Medicaid reform we need and not this rush to cut, cut, cut.

In my op-ed in today’s News and Observer I detailed a new independent nonprofit organization that lets you quickly and easily find out the costs of just about any health care service:

That’s where the new independent, nonprofit organization FAIR Health comes in. FAIR Health (fairhealthconsumer.org)was created to cast light on the black box that has historically surrounded health costs and insurance reimbursement. The organization does something we take for granted in almost any other industry – it provides consumers reliable cost information for specific procedures in a given geographic area.

Over a year ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation produced an excellent animated video narrated by Cokie Roberts that explained the basics of the new national health reform law.  Now they’ve produced a Spanish-language version of the same great video.  GOP candidate Mitt Romney should also take a look, especially since he just produced his latest campaign ad – in Spanish!

NC State Representative Verla Insko announced today that 31 NC legislators are joining state legislators from across the nation in signing on to an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court supporting the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.  UNC Constitutional Law scholar Professor Michael Gerhardt also speaks.  See http://www.progressivestates.org/ACAamicus for more details.

Of course we should compensate the remaining victims of NC’s sterilization program.  But payment – in whatever amount – will never be enough.  Our state also needs to recognize and remember one of our biggest collective failures so that we can try and make sure it never happens again.  How?  Well, over the years we’ve had some suggestions:

1.  Back in 2007 I proposed the museum exhibit that the state Department of Health and Human Services put together with an excellent and very compact overview of NC’s eugenics sterilization program be given a prominent and permanent home at the NC Museum of History.  It’s great to learn about the Wright Brothers, but there are other aspects to NC’s history we must never forget.  How can we learn from our history if great exhibits like this remained stored away and quickly forgotten?

2.  As Adam Linker has suggested, why tuck a historical marker about the eugenics program on a side street when it could go on the Capitol Square?

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Chris Fitzsimon detailed the current debate in the General Assembly regarding the major cuts to NC’s Medicaid program made last year.  While legislators try frantically to avoid blame, the lives of real people are on the line.  Real people like Margaret Toman and her mother Lou Longest.  Watch our amazing video of their story:

If you read one thing about how to save $$ and improve care in our health  system this year then read this:

It Costs More, but Is It Worth More?