- U.S. agency asks about sharp drop in Pa.’s Medicaid rolls, By Angela Couloumbis, July 12, 2012, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Pennsylvania has dropped tens of thousands of people from its Medicaid rolls since last summer – and now the Obama administration wants to know if the state wrongly cut off those benefits. The federal agency that oversees how states administer Medicaid sent a letter last month to the Department of Public Welfare saying initial data showed 130,000 people, including 89,000 children, had been dropped from state Medicaid rolls between August and January. Those people were dropped, noted the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, when DPW was struggling with a backlog, leaving it unable to sort through all the information people had submitted in efforts to qualify for the benefit…”
- Pa. eliminating easy stopgap health coverage for poor, By Miriam Hill, July 9, 2012, Philadelphia Inquirer: “If you are poor in Pennsylvania and temporarily disabled, a health-care worker can fill out a one-page form that qualifies you to receive medical care paid for by the state. But that is changing under a new policy, requiring more paperwork, that Gov. Corbett is implementing, arguing that it will save taxpayers money without denying significant numbers of people medical care. Health-care workers and advocates for the poor, however, say the new policy could leave thousands of people without needed care and drive up medical costs in the long run…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty