California HME Update

Governor's Budget Proposal Targets Medi-Cal Cuts
As expected Governor Brown's budget proposal has a wide array of budget cuts to try and balance an estimated $25B budget deficit for the next 18 months. His plan is to fast track budget cuts of $12.5 billion combined with voter to be approved tax extension of $9B by June of this year. The politics clearly have changed with a Democrat Governor and a simple majority vote budget requirement, but many issues must be played out, not the least of which is voter appetite for tax increases.

The issues for CAMPS are nearly identical to the proposed cuts to Medi-Cal that were rejected last year.

The Governor's budget proposal includes:

hard cap on DME at the 90^th percentile of adult use, $1,604
hard cap on medical supplies at 90^th percentile of adult use, different caps for incontinence, ostomy, urologicals etc.
elimination of coverage of enteral nutrition that is administered orally, i.e. only coverage for tube fed patients

The budget contains a wide variety of other co-pays, caps on annual doctor visits, prescriptions per month, and calls for savings from a 10% provider rate cut. The latter has been enjoined in federal court, see article below.

We will oppose these terrible reductions on access to necessary and cost effective home care services. The fight will be difficult, but we encourage you to contact your legislators and patients about the possible impact of these caps and cuts. You can go to www.savetheoptionals.com for tools and resources.

US Supreme Court Did Not Issue Decision on Acceptance of Medi-Cal Rate Cut Appeal
The expected US Supreme Court to issue a decision yesterday on whether they would accept or reject the DHCS appeal on the rate cut lawsuit did not happen. We will now wait until next week where a decision is still likely. The lack of announcement could be caused by a variety of factors and we remain optimistic that the appeal will not be accepted.