- No easy cure for struggling Medicaid, By Mary Garrigan, April 6, 2012, Rapid City Journal: “Jennifer Brown and her children are caught in the middle of a Medicaid storm that’s brewing in South Dakota. Five-year-old Jenasis Brown and her younger brother, Roy, are two of the approximately 115,000 South Dakotans who qualify each month for health care through Medicaid or its corollary for kids, the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But qualifying for Medicaid – and finding a doctor or a dentist who will take you as a new patient – can be two very different things, according to Dr. Karla Murphy, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association. At a time when Medicaid enrollments are rising because of a bad economy, the number of doctors and dentists accepting Medicaid patients is declining in South Dakota. One in seven South Dakotans is already a Medicaid recipient and nearly 70 percent of those are children. The Affordable Care Act, new federal health care legislation aimed at reducing the number of uninsured people, is expected to add another 54,000 South Dakotans to Medicaid rolls between 2014 and 2019…”
- Alabama Medicaid Agency announces late payments to providers, By Casandra Andrews, April 3, 2012, Mobile Press-Register: “As Alabama grapples with covering the rising costs of health care to about a million poor and disabled Medicaid recipients, health care providers across the state were notified last month that some reimbursements for services would be late. Medicaid is a state and federally funded healthcare program for about 1 million lower-income children, families and disabled Alabama residents. For every state dollar spent, the federal government chips in a little more than $2. Late today, the Alabama Medicaid Agency announced that it would be releasing the remaining funds to providers whose payments were delayed because of state cash flow issues at the end of March…”
- Ala. House panel OKs deep state government cuts, Associated Press, April 4, 2012, Birmingham News: “An Alabama House budget-writing committee has approved a $1.39 billion budget that would cut spending by 30 percent for non-education state agencies, a move that could mean massive layoffs and cuts to programs that help the poor. The spending plan contains $430 million less than the budget for the current fiscal year for non-education state agencies. Officials say it could mean layoffs for hundreds of state employees and cuts to key services such as medicine for Medicaid patients. A Department of Human Resources program that provides assistance to poor children could be eliminated…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty