Medicaid Recipients can leave HMO for good cause
More good news for victims of so-called Medicaid reform.
Medicaid HMO patients will be allowed to drop out of their health plans and switch their care to other doctors under a pair of administrative and legal actions recently approved by the state. Medicaid HMO patients will be told that they can leave their health plan if their doctors aren’t in the network of the managed care organization or if their care is poor, denied or unreasonably delayed, among other things…
“As the state moves more and more to managed care, these rights become more critical,” said Florida Legal Services attorney Miriam Harmatz, lead counsel on the class-action suit filed a year ago in Fort Lauderdale…
Harmatz represented David Reed, David Mitchell and Joann Brown, three Medicaid recipients who filed a class action suit last year on behalf of the 200,000 Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled in the Medicaid Reform counties. The suit alleged that AHCA violated their rights and federal law by failing to let them know they could leave their managed-care plan at any time if they had a good reason.
AHCA tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the case. On Nov. 20, the agency signed a settlement agreement with Florida Legal Services and Broward Legal Aid.