Cuts in hospital subsidies threaten safety-net care, By Sabrina Tavernise, November 8, 2013, New York Times: “The uninsured pour into Memorial Health hospital here: the waitress with cancer in her voice box who for two years assumed she just had a sore throat. The unemployed diabetic with a wound stretching the length of her shin. The construction worker who could no longer breathe on his own after weeks of untreated asthma attacks and had to be put on a respirator. Many of these patients were expected to gain health coverage under the Affordable Care Act through a major expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor. But after the Supreme Court in 2012 gave states the right to opt out, Georgia, like about half the states, almost all of them Republican-led, refused to broaden the program…”
Tag: Hospitals
Medicaid Patients and Hospital Readmissions
NC study cut hospital readmissions among state’s sickest, poorest patients, By John Murawski, August 7, 2013, News and Observer: “A North Carolina study on reducing costly hospital visits cut readmissions by 20 percent among the sickest and poorest patients who are most prone to relying on hospitals for their medical care. The project, believed to be the largest of its kind in the nation, was conducted by Community Care of North Carolina, a Raleigh-based physician-led program that focuses on helping poor people get health care and avoid hospitalization. It involved some 800 nurses and social workers doing intensive follow-ups with Medicaid patients. They sometimes shadowed patients for months to make sure they took their medications, kept their doctor’s appointments and followed all instructions…”
Medicaid Coverage and Prison Inmates
States missing out on millions in Medicaid for prisoners, By Christine Vestal, June 25, 2013, Stateline: “Only a dozen states have taken advantage of a long-standing option to stick the federal government with at least half the cost of hospitalizations and nursing home stays of state prison inmates. The other states have left tens of millions of federal dollars on the table, either because they didn’t know about a federal rule dating to 1997 or they were unable to write the laws and administrative processes to take advantage of it. States and localities have a constitutional obligation to provide adequate health care to prisoners, and they must pay for it out of their own budgets. However, a 1997 ruling says that care provided to inmates beyond the walls of the prison qualifies for Medicaid reimbursement if the prisoner is Medicaid eligible. The federal government then pays 50 percent to 84 percent of Medicaid costs…”