- State drafting a waiver to provide health insurance benefits in exchange for community service, By Wendy Leonard, November 17, 2011, Deseret News: “Community service in exchange for health insurance? It’s an idea that the Utah Department of Health is exploring to allow an otherwise economically challenged population to give back to their community. Based on income, some recipients of the state’s Medicaid health insurance benefit share in the cost by paying modest co-pays and premiums. A pilot program would offer the service option in exchange for health benefits for those who can’t afford to contribute toward cost of Medicaid. But the proposed program would first need approval by federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. UDOH has until the first of the year to submit a waiver to CMS that could change how Medicaid operates in Utah and allow the program…”
- Utahns: Mandated charity work for Medicaid is ‘demeaning’, By Kirsten Stewart, November 17, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “Annette Wright minces no words when asked about the prospect of having to do community service for her Medicaid coverage. It’s ‘crazy’ and ‘demeaning,’ because it presumes people on the low-income health care program don’t already give back, said the 54-year-old career actress. ‘Volunteering should come from the heart. It’s something you do because you want to, not because you have to. What they’re doing is more like coercion.’ Such was the prevailing sentiment Thursday at a public hearing on an experiment that, if approved by the federal government, would require fewer than 100 Medicaid recipients to do charity work in exchange for health insurance. The pilot program is meant to build a sense of community, not punish the poor, said its architect, Rep. Ronda Menlove, R-Garland…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty