- McCrory plan would open state’s Medicaid business to private companies, By Lynn Bonner, April 4, 2013, News & Observer: “Gov. Pat McCrory wants to overhaul the state’s Medicaid program by having managed care companies offer health care plans for poor, elderly and disabled people. The overhaul, unveiled by administration officials Wednesday, would diminish the role of a nationally recognized nonprofit agency while opening the state’s Medicaid business to private companies that now provide such services in more than half the states in the country. McCrory said Wednesday that the change would benefit health care providers and the state by bringing predictability to Medicaid expenses, which the state has trouble estimating from year to year…”
- States saying ‘no’ to Medicaid expansion, but low-income citizens, patients worried, By Halimah Abdullah, April 5, 2013, CNN: “Bettina Cox battled cervical cancer in 2012. A year later, the Texas native feels that narrowly qualifying for a Medicaid-sponsored program for low-income and uninsured female cancer patients saved her life. She now wants her governor and state legislature to support an expansion of Medicaid — part of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act — that she feels could save the lives of thousands of other women in her state by helping them detect diseases much earlier. But if Texas lawmakers have their way — as well as governors and legislatures in Florida, South Carolina and nearly a dozen other states — low-income Americans like Cox may not have expanded access to funds needed for such procedures. Those states feel the expansion is an unnecessary government overreach at a time when spending should be limited, not expanded…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty