Current Medicaid patients miss out on better preventive care, By Christine Vestal, July 8, 2013, Stateline: “A hallmark of President Obama’s health law is that it requires insurers to cover early detection and disease prevention services at no cost to the patient. The new preventive care guidelines are intended to improve overall health, reduce the number of preventable deaths and lower costs. But some of the nation’s unhealthiest people — 25 million low-income adults who already qualify for Medicaid — aren’t likely to receive those benefits, because the requirements in the Affordable Care Act pertain only to private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid expansion programs…”
Medicaid coverage gap looms, By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar (AP), July 2, 2013, Columbus Dispatch: “Nearly 2 in 3 uninsured poor people who would qualify for subsidized coverage under President Barack Obama’s health-care law may be out of luck next year because their states have not expanded Medicaid. An Associated Press analysis of figures from the Urban Institute finds a big coverage gap developing, with 9.7 million out of 15 million potentially eligible adults living in states that are refusing the expansion or are still undecided with time running short. Ohio is in the latter group…”
In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck, By Eli Saslow, July 6, 2013, Washington Post: “It was the first day of summer in a place where summers had become hazardous to a child’s health, so the school bus rolled out of the parking lot on its newest emergency route. It passed by the church steeples of downtown and curved into the blue hills of Appalachia. The highway became two lanes. The two lanes turned to red dirt and gravel. On the dashboard of the bus, the driver had posted an aphorism. ‘Hunger is hidden,’ it read, and this bus had been dispatched to find it…”
Some schools must scramble to feed low-income kids during summer, By Dalina Castellanos, July 4, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “Mylene Guzman walked her three daughters through the gate at Hollingworth Elementary School in West Covina straight to the cafeteria. The girls weren’t late to summer school classes, nor were they participating in any of the Rowland Unified School District’s theater or art programs. The trio were there for lunch — pizza and cherry-flavored applesauce. Rowland Unified is participating in the federal Summer Food Service Program, which allows Guzman, who lives within the district’s boundaries, to feed her daughters for free…”
