JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Roughly 240,000 more Missouri Medicaid recipients are being switched to a system under which private companies oversee patient care. The system, called managed care, will be expanded statewide on Monday.
About 500,000 Missourians in 54 counties along I-70 already had health care under that model. The rest received care under a fee-for-service model. Under that system, physicians are reimbursed as patients are treated.
Missouri senior citizens, blind people and people with disabilities on Medicaid will not be impacted by the change.
State lawmakers in 2015 passed a budget that called for expanding managed care statewide. It’s now under scrutiny by some lawmakers who say the change was pushed through too quickly and without enough public input.