- State legislatures quarrel over whether to expand Medicaid, By Annie Feidt, May 12, 2015, National Public Radio: “Five years after the Affordable Care Act passed, the law’s provision allowing the expansion of Medicaid coverage to more people is still causing huge fights in state legislatures. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia said yes to Medicaid expansion when the law went into effect. Since then, just six more have signed on. States that say yes get billions of additional federal dollars, but many Republican lawmakers are loathe to say yes to the Obama administration…”
- More managed care, more problems?, By Jordan Shapiro, May 15, 2015, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Gov. Jay Nixon recently approved an expansion of Medicaid managed care and now the difficult work begins to shift 200,000 Missourians onto private health plans. Around the country more and more states are shifting to the managed care model. It differs from traditional Medicaid in that a private corporation receives a flat amount from the state to manage and pay for various aspects of a recipient’s care. Under traditional Medicaid, the state directly reimburses providers for each test and treatment…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty