- Medicaid cuts call health care for vulnerable Idahoans into question, By Colleen LaMay, March 3, 2010, Idaho Statesman: “No matter where you cut Medicaid, you are bound to slice into care that matters a great deal to some of the 213,000 people who rely on it for their health care. The Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Thursday will consider how to make up a $29 million shortfall in state funding for Medicaid for this year, as well as how and where to curb Medicaid to meet JFAC’s budget goals for 2011. Medicaid started its fiscal year in July with a budget of about $1.5 billion in federal and state funding. That dropped to $1.4 billion as the economic news became more grim…”
- Idaho lawmakers approve budget cuts for Medicaid, By Brian Murphy, March 4, 2010, Idaho Statesman: “Idaho legislative budget writers approved a Medicaid budget Thursday morning that forces the Department of Health and Welfare to finding savings of more than $47 million in the program and gives Gov. Butch Otter the authority to modify state statutes to keep the program in check. The entire Medicaid budget is $1.55 billion dollars, with $298 million coming from the General Fund. More than $1.5 billion of the budget comes from the federal government. Lawmakers expect $25 million to come from the Hospital Assessment Act, a bill that has yet to be introduced this session. Hospitals will pay the state in order to continue to keep its federal match. That still leaves more than $22 million in savings for the department to find…”
- State can’t cut Medi-Cal payments to hospitals, By Bob Egelko, March 4, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle: “A federal appeals court barred California on Wednesday from lowering Medi-Cal payments to doctors and hospitals by 5 percent and from cutting in-home care workers’ wages by nearly 20 percent, saying the state’s budget crisis doesn’t justify violating federal laws that protect the poor and disabled.In four rulings, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected attempts by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to reduce the state’s deficit by paying less to the health professionals who treat 6.6 million low-income Californians, and to hundreds of thousands of workers who care for some of the neediest…”
Day: March 4, 2010
Colorado Benefits Management System and Medicaid
Paperwork maze endangering Colorado Medicaid patients, By Allison Sherry, March 3, 2010, Denver Post: “As Denver County and state attorney general investigators probe why an asthmatic boy on Medicaid couldn’t get his medication and died, advocates say eligibility glitches are a daily headache causing life-threatening problems for the poor. Since the recession drove thousands more people to the public safety net, advocacy lawyers have received an increasing number of calls from people unable to get health care or prescription drugs – even though they carry Medicaid or Child Health Plan Plus eligibility cards. ‘I deal with this every day. There is some problem, someone I have to call, and it hurts care,’ said Michelle Tafoya, an intake worker at Rose Pediatrics and herself a victim of a computer glitch. When Tafoya went to get antidepressants for her oldest son earlier this year, the system said he had no pharmacy benefits – even though he was enrolled in Child’s Health Plan Plus, or CHP. Because Tafoya battles with Medicaid discrepancies for a living, she asked the pharmacy for a loan on the drugs and started calling CHP contractors every day…”