Kimmy drops critics from Medicaid advisory panel

[47of74]

Kimmy doesn't want people who will challenge her

Gov. Kim Reynolds has dropped an outspoken Medicaid adviser who repeatedly voiced concerns about how private management companies were treating Iowans with disabilities.

David Hudson spent two years as co-chairman of Iowa's Medical Assistance Advisory Council, whose duties include monitoring the state's shift to private management of its $5 billion Medicaid program.

The council has an executive committee, with about 12 members, which meets monthly. The full council, with more than 50 members, meets quarterly. Hudson was co-chairman of both and was paid $50 per meeting. He and two other members of the executive committee, Jodi Tomlonovic and Julie Fugenschuh, were not reappointed by Reynolds when their terms expired June 30.

Tomlonovic is executive director of the Family Planning Council of Iowa, but said she represents the public on the Medicaid panel. Like Hudson, she was a critic of the impact of privatization.

[progressoid]

1. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tells ya.

[rurallib]

2. Sad that a critic like Hudson was dropped

but it sounds like in general he favored managed health care. Health care should not be a for profit enterprise. Therefore the management of Medicaid should revert to the state.

One thing that always bothers me is that Repubs (and Hudson is a Repub) only understand problems when it DIRECTLY affects them. In Hudson's case we have this paragraph:

Hudson said he initially supported Branstad's 2015 decision to hire private companies to manage care for the 600,000 Iowans on Medicaid. But he said he felt a duty to speak up when he saw those companies cut crucial services to his son and other Iowans with disabilities.