New statewide Medicaid plan wins praise, By Gary Pettus, January 14, 2011, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “A Medicaid patient for nearly three years, Dorathy Shirley can tick off a list of complaints that reads like a medical dictionary. Asthma, back pain, bleeding ulcers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, degenerative joint disease, diabetes, glaucoma, high blood pressure and so on. ‘I’m always in pain,’ said Shirley, 62, of Jackson. Aggravating her distress are her out-of-pocket payments for medications normally too numerous to be covered by Medicaid, including three that bleed her of more than $100 a month, each. But on Jan. 1 relief arrived with the debut of a new statewide plan meant to improve the health of thousands of Mississippi’s most vulnerable Medicaid patients while saving the state money. The state Division of Medicaid calls it the Mississippi Coordinated Access Network, or MississippiCAN, but Shirley calls it a ‘blessing’ because it pays for more of her medicine. ‘I believe it will be a good thing,’ she said, ‘and it keeps you kind of motivated.’ Under this managed-care system, the motivation is furnished by an offer of gifts or other rewards to eligible recipients already on Medicaid, the federal-state medical coverage program for low-income residents and others. The rewards are reserved for those who undergo certain health screenings, lead healthier lives and/or see their primary-care doctor soon after signing on…”
Tag: Mississippi
State Medicaid Programs – Mississippi, Montana
- Health care squeeze forcing some Mississippi kids out, By Molly Parker, November 30, 2010, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Parents across Mississippi say they are frustrated with state Medicaid officials as programs are downsized and benefits canceled. ‘People are really being turned down right and left right now and it’s frightening,’ said Eric Weber, an assistant professor in the Public Policy Leadership Department at the University of Mississippi and the parent of a disabled child. ‘People who were getting covered last year are not getting covered this year.’ Gov. Haley Barbour’s tough financial stand toward Medicaid speaks volumes about the legacy he may leave when his term expires in January 2012…”
- Medicaid spending ups state budget, By Mike Dennison, November 26, 2010, Billings Gazette: “Year after year, the big kahuna in state spending is human services – and Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s proposed budget makes no exception here, with substantial increases in Medicaid, the state-federal program that pays medical bills for the poor. The governor also proposes full extension of funding for the Healthy Montana Kids program, with its goal of expanding government-funded health insurance to another 15,000 to 20,000 children in low- and middle-income families. These and many other programs all add up to a proposed $3.7 billion in spending (including federal funds) on public health and human-service programs for the next two years, or more than 40 percent of the entire state-authorized budget…”
Hurricane Katrina Recovery at 5-Year Anniversary
- A tale of two recoveries, By Michael A. Fletcher, August 27, 2010, Washington Post: “The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents. The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm…”
- On Katrina anniversary, recovery takes hold, By Campbell Robertson, August 27, 2010, New York Times: “This city, not that long ago, appeared to be lost. Only five years have passed since corpses were floating through the streets, since hundreds of thousands of survivors sat in hotel rooms and shelters and the homes of relatives, learning from news footage that they were among the ranks of the homeless. For most of the last year, in many parts of the city, the waters finally seemed to be receding. In November, a federal judge ruled that much of the flooding after Hurricane Katrina was a result of the negligence of the Army Corps of Engineers, vindicating New Orleanians, who had hammered this gospel for four years. In January, the federal government cleared the way for nearly half a billion dollars in reimbursement for the city’s main public hospital, an acceleration of funds that led to the announcement this week that nearly two billion more would be coming in a lump-sum settlement for city schools…”
- Billions in Katrina relief funds still unspent, By Geoff Pender, August 27, 2010, Miami Herald: “More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader eager to spend it elsewhere. In June, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ordered data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development into how much remains unspent from the more than $20 billion in Community Development Block Grant hurricane relief funds earmarked for Gulf states after the 2005 storms. The answer: about $5.4 billion, including $3 billion of the $13 billion earmarked for Louisiana and $2 billion of the $5.5 billion for Mississippi…”
- New Orleans five years after Katrina: Chins up, hopes high, August 26, 2010, The Economist: “It is still obvious to any visitor-especially one who ventures out of the French Quarter, with its restaurants and night clubs, into the unstarred districts of the city. Something awful happened here in the not-too-distant past. The signs are everywhere: empty lots overgrown by weeds, ramshackle, leaning houses, derelict public buildings still awaiting restoration. Some houses feature ‘Katrina tattoos’ sprayed by rescuers as they completed house-by-house searches in 2005. Nobody at home. And yet New Orleans has undoubtedly recovered its essence. The old neighbourhoods are almost intact, and the city’s irrepressible people have mostly returned. Experts estimate that perhaps 360,000 people now live in a city that was home to around 100,000 more on the day disaster struck. Those who left were probably disproportionately black and poor. Yet the city’s large black majority, still there and mostly still poor, has ensured that the extravagant culture of New Orleans has survived the flood unharmed…”
- Disasters widen the rich-poor gap, By John Mutter, August 25, 2010, Nature.com: “As the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, recovery in New Orleans is patchy. The hurricane flushed out many of the poorer people. For those who remained, almost without exception, the poorer neighbourhoods have experienced the slowest repopulation and recovery of basic amenities such as schools, shops and petrol stations. The poorest district of New Orleans – the Lower Ninth Ward – has about 24% of its former residents, whereas the wealthy Central Business District has seen 157% repopulation. Low-income black workers were seven times more likely to lose their pre-Katrina jobs than higher-income white workers. And low-income people have found it more difficult to attain basic living conditions, including good access to health care – in 2008 there were 38% fewer hospital beds available in New Orleans than before the storm…”