Tagged: Medicaid

Governor Pat McCrory outlined a plan to significantly change North Carolina's Medicaid program last week. A key person responsible for filling in the details is Carol Steckel. She's the director of the state's Medicaid program, and she spoke to WFAE's Michael Tomsic about the reasons for the overhaul and how it's designed to work.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory plans to make major changes to the state's Medicaid system. About 1.8 1.5 million North Carolinians who are low-income, young, elderly or disabled rely on Medicaid for health coverage.

McCrory said the current system is broken and inefficient.  He pointed to an audit that showed the state has been horrible at managing the cost of the program. He said the state hasn't been much better at managing the care people get, either.

  Mecklenburg County will have another chance to prove it’s ready to take over more than $200 million in Medicaid funds for mental health services.

The county spent the last two years and $3 million  preparing its agency MeckLINK to handle mental health, substance abuse, and disability services, as part of a statewide change to how Medicaid funds for those services are dispersed. 

Mecklenburg County will continue its fight to reinstate its mental health service agency, MeckLINK, as the overseer of hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds. In a last ditch effort, county commissioners unanimously voted to take their case to court.