First responders waded into the disagreement on Medicaid reimbursements between the governor and the legislature on Monday with a news conference on funding shortfalls for ambulance services.
“We can no longer allow Medicaid to not reimburse us the cost of doing business,” said Bruce Baxter, CEO of New Britain EMS and President of the Connecticut EMS Chiefs Association. Baxter was part of a coalition of ambulance drivers and emergency responders who joined lawmakers at the Legislative Office Building to make their point on Monday.
The senate chairs of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Human Services and Public Health committees said that the state must keep its word to emergency transport workers, and push back on the Lamont administration’s plan to eliminate a planned $5.36 million increase for emergency transport responders.
The increase was part of the budget agreement that Gov. Ned Lamont signed last year during the first year of the biennial budget.
But the governor has remained steadfast in his stance on Medicaid reimbursements despite calls from the legislature to restore the money for first responders. While there were no Republican lawmakers who spoke at Monday’s news conference, the issue is bipartisan this year as GOP lawmakers have also urged Lamont to improve Medicaid reimbursement rates for other services.
Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, said that he doesn’t understand Lamont’s stance on Medicaid, and that something different needs to be done.
“Speaking personally, it is a little baffling that we’re moving backward – that we have a cut in this budget – and it is not right,” he said.
Sen. Saud Anwar, a Democrat from South Windsor who is also a medical doctor, said during the news conference that the current state of the system is failing ambulance workers.
“We are failing,” he said. “We are failing you, we are failing our communities, because we are not investing in our first responders.”
Chris Collibee, the Lamont administration’s budget spokesperson, said in a statement that the governor wants to wait for the second part of a two-part study of Medicaid that was commissioned in 2023 before fully addressing those funding needs in the state.
“Recognizing the importance of first establishing a comprehensive and well-informed approach to providers’ rates before targeting specific providers for rate increases and the fact that ambulance providers already received significant increases in the last biennium, the Governor’s budget maintains rates for ambulance providers in FY2025,” the statement read.
The first part of the study examined Medicaid reimbursement rates for over 11,000 specialized physicians, dental, and behavioral health services. Results indicate that Connecticut’s payments were below a benchmark set by peer states for 85% of the services analyzed and below a benchmark based on Medicare rates for 94% of the services analyzed. The Lamont administration wants to wait for the next part in order to make a more informed decision.
An estimated 40% of emergency medical transports are for clients with Medicaid.
There is currently about $7 million in the budget that accounts for a certain amount of Medicaid rates, a number that Lesser has said is nowhere near enough.
Bill Schietinger, a Regional Director for American Medical Response and chair of the Connecticut EMS Advisory Board, said the $5.36 million was a recognition that ambulance services are in urgent need of help while the Medicaid study is under way, rather than after.
“Connecticut’s ambulance services are always there when someone needs us, and when we needed help last year, the Governor and legislature gave us short-term help with a modest boost in Medicaid rates and commissioned a study to examine long-term, structural reforms to how this state pays for Medicaid services for its neediest people,” Schietinger said. “Now the Governor wants to take that money away, and we are here to urge the entire General Assembly to keep the promise that they made.”
Arne Meis, of the Winsted Area Ambulance Association, said Connecticut’s ambulance and EMS providers are losing money on every Medicaid patient they serve at a time when operational expenses are rising and staff recruitment and retention are falling.
