Blackwell will create the Ohio Health Financing Commission to coordinate health care policy and expenditures. …

The commission will supervise all state agencies involved in purchasing, providing and regulating the health care delivery system. It will be designated as the overall Ohio Medicaid agency to ensure it has supervisory authority over Ohio’s Medicaid program. The commission will be responsible for the critical relationship with federal Center for Medicaid Services programs, and seek waivers whenever necessary to implement programs.

Upgraded IT systems

Better Audting

More Long Term Care financing and service choices.  Review of payment practices.

Transfer Medicaid patients to managed care systems (HMO’s)

Transfer all of Medicaid to a consumer directed private health care approach!!! (ed. I added the exclamations).

No manipulation of eligibility criteria, instead, a target of 100% private insurance.

Strict spending targets.

The Buckeye Health Connection would match uninsured individuals with private health insurance coverage and facilitate those relationships as described below.

…last paragraph:

Also, Blackwell will seek to strengthen and modernize health care purchasing pools currently providing health care insurance to Ohioans. Consumer-driven purchasing groups should be given the opportunity to provide new forms of consumer-directed health care products, including health savings accounts.

All Uninsured are required to be covered ala the Massachusetts Plan:

The Massachusetts plan starts from the fundamental premise that covering the uninsured
should be accomplished through the free market and not through expansion of a government
program, such as Medicaid. Accordingly, the Massachusetts plan is based upon the creation of a
new insurance marketplace, called the “Connector,” to match uninsured individuals with private
health insurance.
The Connector will not offer any health insurance coverage. However, the Connector
will allow each uninsured individual to create a personal account to accumulate health insurance
premium dollars.
The premium dollars will be derived from: (i) employer contributions (from employers
to 50 employees); (ii) employee contributions; and, (iii) to the extent determined by the State,
subsidies for low income individuals. The Connector will be structured to permit use of the IRC
125 deduction for health insurance costs permitting the coverages to be purchased with pre-tax
dollars. The dollars from all sources are combined in each individual’s account and the
individual selects a health insurance plan from a list of plans that will be “pre-approved” by the
Connector.

Additionally:

One immediate step would be to increase the age a young adult can remain on a family
insurance policy to 29.

A Strickland-Fisher Administration will seek a federal Medicaid 1115 Waiver to permit federal matching on spending to support the investment needed for this initiative. Combined with current state resources, this will generate sufficient funding to cover the cost of the entire program – totaling $550 million over the first two years. This will not take additional tax dollars from Ohio taxpayers, but will simply take advantage of available federal funding that the state of Ohio is not currently pursuing.

Funding for the Massachusetts plan will be drawn from three principle sources: (i)
transfer of current Medicare funding into the Connector pool to subsidize insurance; (ii)
individual contributions; and, (iii) an employer charge of $295 per employee on each employer
with 11 or more employees who refuses to cooperate with the requirements of the program (such

as setting up an IRC §125 cafeteria plan).

Administration will aggressively reach out to eligible families and children to make certain that they are covered.

The Commission made several important recommendations in this area, including: (i)
establishing an evidence-based drug formulary; (ii) consolidating all Ohio pharmacy purchases
into one purchasing group; (iii) consider joining a multi-state pharmacy purchasing consortium;
and, (iv) monitor the effectiveness of pharmaceutical regimes for patients.

Healthy Ohio, an initiative to identify duplicative health and social services costs paid for with state dollars and incentivize health contractors to achieve specific health and social service benchmarks.

A Strickland-Fisher Administration will challenge Ohio’s families to play a role in Healthy Ohio by taking a larger responsibility in the healthcare decision-making process, focusing on preventive care and making appropriate, educated lifestyle choices.

Healthy Ohio initiative will work with Ohio’s healthcare and higher education communities to address the shortage of nurses by making clinical faculty jobs more competitive, and offering salary and other incentives to encourage trained clinical faculty to stay in Ohio and teach.

[more money for nursing colleges]

A Strickland-Fisher administration will be dedicated to establishing a virtual space for health research, development, and care, putting Ohio’s healthcare institutions at the forefront of new information technologies and delivery systems. These include the use of electronic medical records, “real time” telemedicine, and other communication innovations. The presence of such a dedicated network will position Ohio companies well to compete for new federal programs devoted to the development of new healthcare information technologies.

The benefits of such technological capabilities are widespread including increased efficiencies, stabilizing healthcare costs, healthy outcomes, and enhanced delivery of care to currently underserved populations.