Source:
APPOSTED: 11:10 am EST November 20, 2007
UPDATED: 11:35 am EST November 20, 2007
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Strickland administration has backed out of plans to restore dental benefits for 700,000 low-income Ohioans and to boost Medicaid payments to hospitals and doctors who care for the poor.
Higher than expected caseloads in the program, which provides state and federal dollars to insure the poor, made it impossible for the state to afford the $65 million a year that expanded benefits would have cost, Keith Dailey, a spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland, said Monday.
"The governor is committed to moving forward in a fiscally responsible way," Dailey said. He noted that the administration will get new numbers in mid-December that may change the outlook.
The decision came less than a day before a hearing scheduled Tuesday to consider the expansion, which would have reversed cuts the state made in 2005.
The two-year state operating budget that went into effect July 1 called for restoring dental benefits, which had been cut by lawmakers in 2005, beginning Jan. 1. It also called for a 3.2 percent increase in Medicaid rates to hospitals and a 3 percent increase for doctors and other non-hospital providers.
Representatives of the physicians and dentist associations were outraged, saying they feared providers will now drop out of Medicaid as a result, leaving poor Ohioans without needed services.
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