Health care providers that fail to join the provider networks of Missouri Medicaid managed care plans will see their Medicaid payments cut 10 percent by the state under a new state policy.

The purpose of the policy, according to the state, is to encourage hospitals and physicians to join the provider networks of three managed care plans that serve more than 700,000 residents of the state.  Providers, on the other hand, say this policy will discourage them from serving Medicaid patients at all and will detract from their ability to negotiate reasonable rates with the state’s three Medicaid managed care plans.

Learn more about this new Missouri policy and its potential implications for providers, Medicaid beneficiaries, the insurers, and the state in this article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.