Budget-strapped California is aggressively moving its poorest residents to managed health care, whether they're seniors, rural residents or people with disabilities. <\/p>\n
So, when Gov. Jerry Brown proposed earlier this year to transfer the nearly 900,000 poor children in the Healthy Families insurance program into Medi-Cal, he saw it as another opportunity to reduce costs by expanding dental managed care. <\/p>\n
But something happened between then and now - and that was Sacramento County. <\/p>\n
Sacramento's poor-performing Medi-Cal dental managed care program foiled Brown's plans, legislators say. <\/p>\n
\"That failure certainly has stopped the expansion of dental managed care,\" said Assemblyman Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat who also is a pediatrician. <\/p>\n
\"Hopefully we as a state have learned from that failure, and not only on the dental side. <\/p>\n
\"Hopefully, we can apply those lessons on the medical side.\" <\/p>\n
Sacramento joins Los Angeles as the only two counties with Medi-Cal dental managed care. <\/p>\n
Their lackluster performance getting poor children into dentists made legislative leaders balk at adding Healthy Families kids to Medi-Cal dental managed care. <\/p>\n
Instead, Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Assembly Speaker John Prez of Los Angeles negotiated a deal to move Healthy Families kids into the more flexible - and potentially more expensive - \"fee-for-service\" dental care model under Medi- <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Originally posted here: <\/p>\n
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