Sen. Barrasso discusses eliminating ‘wasteful’ spending from Medicaid, increasing workforce retention

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., May 6 discussed eliminating waste, fraud and abuse from Medicaid as Congress works to find $880 billion in savings for its reconciliation bill. Barrasso, the Senate majority whip, said there have been no conclusions yet on what could be eliminated from the program. “A lot of discussions, a lot of moving parts — and they haven’t come to the final conclusion on any of those,” he said. Barrasso also discussed the need for Medicaid to focus more on children, pregnant women, and low-income and other individuals in need of care rather than “able-bodied” working individuals.

In addition, Barrasso commented on efforts to reverse declines in essential care, such as maternal health services, in rural areas.

“[We’re] trying to recruit people, trying to retain people, [and] we’ve had to change the laws within the state of Wyoming to keep health care providers there,” he said. “We’ve changed the laws on physician assistants [and] nurse practitioners to make it easier to give them more autonomy to practice. We’re trying to help by paying scholarships for people from our state who will then come, go to school [and] get trained.”

Barrasso also mentioned residency programs associated with the WWAMI medical school program — a partnership between the University of Washington and Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho — as another way of trying to retain health care workers in those states.