Take Action Now: Protect Behavioral Health From Rate Cuts in HB 96
Your voice is needed to keep critical providers in Ohio’s behavioral health system
Tell Ohio Lawmakers that Medicaid Must Stay Strong for Behavioral Health!
The substitute version of HB 96, the state operating budget includes a new limitation on how much the Ohio Department of Medicaid can reimburse its providers. Specifically, this language would prevent community providers from seeking Medicaid reimbursement for all health services at a rate less than or equal to the median rate being paid by commercial health plans.
This will be disastrous for behavioral health providers in Ohio. As you know, for many reasons, including failure to adequately enforce mental health parity laws, commercial insurers reimburse behavioral health services at significantly lower rates than Medicaid. Capping Medicaid reimbursement will undercut providers and make it more difficult for smaller, nonprofit, and faith-based providers to stay in the system.
We need you to act now to help remove this language from the Ohio House’s budget. In collaboration with other behavioral health partners, we are calling on the Ohio House to remove this provision or provide an exemption for behavioral health services. While the Ohio House cannot enact this provision without agreement from the Ohio Senate, it is vital that we remove this from the final House budget.
Please write to your state representative and urge them to remove this harmful language, or at minimum exempt life-saving behavioral health care!