- Working poor losing Obamacare as states resist Medicaid, By Alex Wayne and David Mildenberg, June 24, 2013, Bloomberg: “Rose Ruiz collects $8 an hour cooking, cleaning, checking the oxygen tanks and changing the diapers for a 67-year-old diabetic confined to a studio apartment on the south side of Austin, Texas. Ruiz, a home health aide to Medicaid patients, has no medical insurance herself. Her best shot at getting access to doctors and medicines for her own needs was through President Barack Obama’s expansion of the federal-state Medicaid programs. That hope was scuttled for Ruiz and thousands of other health-care workers across Texas when the state opted out of the Medicaid expansion earlier this month. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured people in the U.S…”
- Pence team not working on Medicaid expansion alternative, By Dan Carden, June 25, 2013, Times of Northwest Indiana: “With just three months until millions of low-income Americans start signing up for an expanded Medicaid program, the Pence administration revealed Tuesday it has yet to begin talking with the federal government about creating an Indiana alternative. Debra Minott, Indiana’s secretary of the Family and Social Services Administration, told the General Assembly’s Health Finance Commission the governor believes preserving the Healthy Indiana Plan, which covers 37,316 participants, is a higher priority than negotiating a Medicaid alternative, which would cover some 400,000 Hoosiers…”
- Despite rejection of Medicaid expansion, next steps in Obamacare set to begin in Wisconsin, By David Wahlberg, June 24, 2013, Wisconsin State Journal: “Though the Legislature last week approved Gov. Scott Walker’s rejection of an optional Medicaid expansion under federal health care reform, the next steps in carrying out the rest of the law are expected to unfold this summer. ‘Navigators’ will be hired to help people enroll in coverage for next year, and details of the private insurance plans to be offered will be released. Outreach campaigns will pick up, including a ‘Get Covered America’ effort launched last week by former campaign staffers for President Barack Obama and ‘Time for Affordability,’ organized by America’s Health Insurance Plans…”
Day: June 26, 2013
Medicaid Coverage and Prison Inmates
States missing out on millions in Medicaid for prisoners, By Christine Vestal, June 25, 2013, Stateline: “Only a dozen states have taken advantage of a long-standing option to stick the federal government with at least half the cost of hospitalizations and nursing home stays of state prison inmates. The other states have left tens of millions of federal dollars on the table, either because they didn’t know about a federal rule dating to 1997 or they were unable to write the laws and administrative processes to take advantage of it. States and localities have a constitutional obligation to provide adequate health care to prisoners, and they must pay for it out of their own budgets. However, a 1997 ruling says that care provided to inmates beyond the walls of the prison qualifies for Medicaid reimbursement if the prisoner is Medicaid eligible. The federal government then pays 50 percent to 84 percent of Medicaid costs…”