Thread: 425,000 Texans on Medicaid to get free HMO's March 1

Valley Health Care Workers With Questions About Managed Care

Reported by: Kirk Chaisson
Last Update: 6:32 pm

State officials are meeting with Valley state employees and health care providers preparing them for the start of something called managed care in South Texas. About 425,000 people who are currently covered by Medicaid will be switched over to private insurance on March 1.

This is something that will affect not only patients and their families but the Valley's entire health care industry as well.

If you are one of the people affected, if you're on Medicaid right now, you will get information in the mail from the state starting in December. Then you select a health plan. The state offers at least two plans in each area so you'll have a choice. Then you select a doctor from the list in your plan.

The state says you'll continue to get all the services traditionally covered by Medicaid. One concern people might have is whether they will get to keep their same doctor.

"We've absolutely tried to minimize that. What we have found in other areas is that if you go to your doctor and say this is the health plan I want, most doctors, they want to keep those patients, they want to keep that relationship, too, and they will enroll"

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