Students Taking State Government to School?

teachers in desksStudents at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill just put together a very thoughtful proposal on how the state of North Carolina could expand its Medicaid program, while still promoting the private insurance market. Here’s a link to a wonderful story, that highlights their efforts and shows, I think convincingly, that the students are taking this topic more seriously than many of our elected officials:
No, I’m not overstating the case. This year, the NC Department of Health and Human Services has hired a $250/hr Medicaid consultantpaid a $210,000 annual salary to a former Louisiana Medicaid director who stayed in NC less than a year, and hired a guy a year out of college for $85,000 a year to be chief spokesperson.  Governor McCrory, DHHS Secretary Wos – I have a message for you:  Save our taxpayers some serious money and look a little closer to home for your expertise.  For instance, take the graduate programs in public policy at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
This week students on the Duke-UNC Student Medicaid Reform Team released a comprehensive, detailed, thoughtful, realistic and highly impressive report on Medicaid Reform in North Carolina.  Titled “A New Health Reform Framework For North Carolina” the 66 page document sets out a plan for NC Medicaid that uses both private health insurers and the current public program to expand coverage, recommends concrete ways to better integrate mental health services and contains detailed estimates of costs and benefits of the proposed changes. It short, the student team directly and comprehensively responds to the charge given to the DHHS Medicaid Reform Commission…(Click here to read more)

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