- Unemployment at 4-Year low as U.S. hiring gains steam, By Nelson D. Schwartz, March 8, 2013, New York Times: “Bolstered by a healthier private sector, the United States economy gained 236,000 jobs in February, well above what had been expected, while the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest level since December 2008…”
- Unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008, By Annalyn Kurtz, March 8, 2013, CNNMoney: “The U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. That’s much stronger growth than in January, when employers hired a revised 119,000 workers. The gains were broad-based as offices, restaurants, construction firms and hospitals all added jobs…”
Day: March 8, 2013
Medicaid Expansion and Health Insurers
Medicaid insurers gear up for profit, By Phil Galewitz, March 8, 2013, USA Today: “After his back injury kept him out of work last year, Sergio Mera enrolled his family in Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor. These days when they need a doctor, the Meras travel less than a mile from their home to a new clinic. ‘They take good care of you,’ says Mera, 37, as he sits in an exam room with his wife and two kids. The clinic, affiliated with Molina Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid managed-care plans, is one of about a dozen facilities the company is opening across the country to handle a wave of new customers in 2014. That’s when about 10 million more people are expected to sign up for Medicaid managed care under the Affordable Care Act, and as states shift enrollees into private plans, according to trade group Medicaid Health Plans of America…”
Health Insurance Coverage for the Poor – Pennsylvania
- Lawyers say thousands wrongly lost Medicaid, By Marc Levy (AP), March 7, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer: “The number of eligible people who were purged from Pennsylvania’s Medicaid rolls amid Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration crackdown aimed at welfare waste is possibly many thousands higher than state officials told lawmakers earlier this week, Philadelphia-based lawyers for the poor told The Associated Press on Thursday…”
- Pa. court: Reinstate health-care funding for the poor, By Amy Worden, March 7, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer: “A state judge has ordered the Corbett administration to reinstate funding for programs that provided health insurance to tens of thousands of low-income Pennsylvanians. In his ruling Tuesday, Commonwealth Court President Judge Dan Pellegrini found that two statutes that stripped money from the adultBasic and Medicaid programs were unconstitutional because they diverted money from the federal tobacco settlement to finance items other than health care in the general budget…”