Dialysis crisis followed shift by Medicaid

By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter | February 12, 2007

 For the past year, a dialysis machine has been keeping Karletta Edwards’ mother alive, substituting for her kidneys to cleanse her blood three times a week.

But in January, shortly after Ohio’s Medicaid program transferred her, along with more than 25,000 other low-income people in Northeast Ohio, into an HMO, something went wrong.

The state’s contracts with insurance companies are expected to save Medicaid $24 million this year, by the time some 125,000 blind, disabled or older people are placed in privately run managed care plans.

Even though the companies are paid 6.6 percent less, Medicaid’s average cost to care for the same population, state officials say the health coverage will remain the same…. Four weeks ago, Edwards received a desperate call from her mother. The transportation service that picked up Emma Hansen from her East Cleveland  home and brought her to the dialysis center didn’t show up. [Continued here]