House Republicans drafting Medicaid oversight bill

DES MOINES - After months of balking at the idea, leaders in the Republican controlled Iowa House said Thursday they are drafting a bill that would provide additional layers of oversight to the state's transition to privately managed Medicaid.

On April 1, the state will shift management of its $5 billion Medicaid program to three private health care companies in a move state officials say will improve services and create cost efficiencies.

While the Democratic-led Senate earlier this session passed a Medicaid oversight bill, Republican leaders said they thought the Legislature's oversight committees were sufficient to keep a watchful eye on the transition.

At a news conference Thursday at the Iowa Capitol, House Republican leaders indicated a softening in that stance, saying they are drafting their own Medicaid oversight bill, which they said may be filed next week.

'(The oversight bill) will contain the elements that give us assurances that we have value for the dollars invested and people are receiving the services that were agreed to in the contract,” said House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake.

Upmeyer said the House's Medicaid oversight bill will be designed to ensure that the transition is achieving its established goals of creating quality services and health care outcomes and that Medicaid patients continue to have access to the same services.

When asked why she supports a Medicaid oversight bill when earlier she said she did not think it was necessary, Upmeyer said the need was created in part because of 'some of the resistance perhaps to implementation.”

'I think at this point we absolutely, as legislators, want to know the information related to the quality, the value, the access, all of those things that go into it,” Upmeyer said. 'Whether you call that oversight or if you call it something else, that's absolutely an important piece, and I don't really think that is the kind of thing we want to do in the oversight committee, which really investigates questions that are very different.”

Water-quality funding

House Republican leaders also said they expect to introduce a bill next week that funds water-quality programs out of a water metering tax that currently goes to the state's general fund.

Republican leaders said they hope to work with the governor's office and Senate Democrats to develop a plan that will have bipartisan support.

They also said the bill being introduced next week is unlikely to include the governor's proposal to share future school infrastructure sales tax revenue with water-quality projects. There are bills in the Legislature that include that funding mechanism, but they have not been acted upon in weeks.

'House Republicans have identified (water quality) as one of our priorities that we need to address this session,” said Rep. Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, who chairs the House's budget committee. 'It's a pretty broad plan that we've come up with because it's going to take a broad solution to this problem.”

Abortion funding

Upmeyer declined to say to what extent Republican leaders will be willing to fight to keep language in the state's health and human services budget that would strip all state funding to Planned Parenthood.

The women's health services provider drew some conservatives' ire after secretly recorded videos showed an employee discussing transfer fees for fetal tissue.

Upmeyer said the House, as it did last year, will pass a health care budget bill that includes language about defunding Planned Parenthood. She did not say, however, to what extent Republican leaders would fight to maintain that language in cross-chamber negotiations with Senate Democrats.

'Let's get the process started before we worry about holding it up,” Upmeyer said.