It is disappointing to see that despite a huge surplus in the Medicaid program, Governor Ralph Northam’s introduced 2022-2024 biennial budget preserves a harmful policy that improperly penalizes emergency physicians and frontline healthcare professionals who have been providing care to all Virginians, including Medicaid patients.
Despite a similar policy being removed from the Virginia budget a few years ago due to being at odds with state and federal law, this policy was enacted at the urging of Medicaid managed care organizations and enacted during the COVID-19 budget uncertainty.