- Doctors fear health overhaul may backfire for poor on Medi-Cal, By Rob Hotakainen, January 16, 2010, Sacramento Bee: “Paul Phinney is happy to be working as a pediatrician in Sacramento these days, with a historic health care bill on the horizon. For starters, he says it’ll be easier to treat patients if Congress makes it illegal for insurance companies to deny treatment for pre-existing conditions. And he says it would be good if those companies could no longer place a cap on how much they’ll pay for medical services. ‘It’s a very exciting time to be part of medicine,’ he said. But he and many other California doctors worry that the soon-to-be-finalized health care bill could backfire and actually make things worse, making it more difficult for the poor to find doctors and sending more of them to emergency rooms. They say that will happen if Congress does not increase reimbursement rates for doctors who treat patients under the state’s Medicaid program…”
- Feds reject Utah’s low Medicaid pay for dentists, By Lisa Rosetta, January 13, 2010, Salt Lake Tribune: “A federal agency has rejected the low pay that Utah allots to dental providers who see Medicaid patients because the rates are too low to guarantee pregnant women and children’s access to services. Last session, state lawmakers took back a one-time 24 percent jump in pay that dentists received in 2008, on top of rolling back their 4.5 percent cost of living raise. Dentists said they couldn’t keep their doors open if they saw Medicaid patients at the lower rate. Some limited the number of Medicaid patients they accept; others stopped seeing them or threatened to do so if the Legislature didn’t take action…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty