Overpaid unemployment benefits top $14 billion, By Annalyn Censky, July 9, 2012, CNNMoney.com: “Don’t spend that unemployment check too fast. The government might ask you to pay it back. Overpayments are a rampant problem in the unemployment insurance system. The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department. Of the states, Indiana was the worst offender, making more improper payments than it did correct ones. Now, the U.S. Department of Labor and the states are in the midst of a massive effort to try to recoup some of their lost funds and avoid future overpayments…”
Day: July 9, 2012
Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Coverage
Health law’s expanded Medicaid could halve Oklahoma’s uninsured poor, By Wayne Greene, July 9, 2012, Tulsa World: “More than half of Oklahoma’s uninsured poor people would be covered by a Medicaid expansion that is part of the Affordable Care Act within five years, according to a 2010 Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured report. With some effort, the expansion could cover nearly three-quarters of uninsured poor Oklahomans, the report says. Oklahoma Health Care Authority figures show that some 624,480 Oklahomans – about 17 percent of the population – don’t have health insurance. A high uninsured population doesn’t just hurt the people who don’t have insurance, said OU-Tulsa President Gerard Clancy, a physician and a leading voice in state health policy discussions…”