- State decides what’s not an emergency, By Jordan Schrader, September 26, 2011, Tacoma News Tribune: “State government is about to start refusing to pay for repeat visitors to emergency rooms whose conditions don’t truly rise to the level of emergencies. The trouble is all in how you define an emergency. Starting Saturday, Medicaid won’t pay for more than three ER visits in a year for a patient’s nonemergency conditions as defined by the state. A list of more than 700 diagnoses put into that category has drawn fire from hospitals and doctors’ groups over inclusions whose symptoms seem awfully similar to emergencies…”
- Wisconsin starts publishing Medicaid cut proposals, By Scott Bauer (AP), September 27, 2011, Sheboygan Press: “Gov. Scott Walker’s administration unveiled a website Monday that includes a handful of Medicaid cost-savings proposals intended to help it reach required cuts of about $444 million over the next two years. But there’s a long way to go. Most of what was released was either already known about or would make little progress toward what needs to be cut. Only three of the six areas of savings detailed Monday had not been previously announced. Those three total $6 million in savings in state money, just 3 percent of the $181.8 million that must be found under the two-year budget that took effect in July. The total amount of unspecified cuts that must be found, including federal funding and other sources, is $444 million…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty