MIAMI (AP) — Florida Senate leaders may propose cutting dentistry, optometry and mental health services for Medicaid patients as they try to curb the program's budget, which is expected to top $21 billion next year. The emerging Senate bill calls for making cuts in so-called optional services as well as increasing reimbursement rates and limiting legal liabilities for primary care doctors. Although the increased reimbursement rates would cost more, senators want to encourage primary … [Read more...]
Double-digit Medicaid growth pile-drives Texas budget
January 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
By Caralyn Davis Not only is Texas facing a shortfall of $11 billion to $15 billion when the next state budget is due in 2011, but unanticipated healthcare costs have already driven the state's current two-year budget, just six months after passage, into the red as well, reports the Dallas Morning News. Medicaid is the primary culprit, accounting for $1.3 billion of the deficit. Other offenders include health coverage for state employees ($142 million); correctional managed healthcare … [Read more...]
GOP invokes 1700s doctrine in health care fight
January 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment
John Miller | Associated Press BOISE, Idaho – Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight President Obama's health care overhaul. They are introducing measures that hinge on "nullification," Thomas Jefferson's late 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters. GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, … [Read more...]
A Ticket to Nowhere: How a Provider Shortage Jeopardizes Central Texas Health
January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment
By Patricia Young Brown Central Health Austin has a healthcare-provider shortage that will worsen dramatically over the next ten years if nothing changes, affecting health care’s quality, cost, and accessibility for all of us. And this will affect not only those who have private health insurance, but also those who may qualify for Medicaid, as well as over 67,000 current Medicare beneficiaries and the tens of thousands of people who will age into Medicare in the coming … [Read more...]
Christie May Cut Medicaid as $10.5 Billion New Jersey Budget Deficit Looms
January 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Terrance Dopp New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gives his first State of the State speech tomorrow after saying he may cut Medicaid and employee benefits to eliminate a $10.5 billion budget deficit in the second-wealthiest U.S. state. Christie, who took office a year ago, said he’ll tell lawmakers in his address that New Jersey remains in a financial crisis and they need to maintain fiscal controls as employment and revenue recover slowly from the longest recession since the 1930s. The … [Read more...]
GOP Governors Seek Leeway to Cut Medicaid Rolls
January 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
By Janet Adamy Republican governors are pressing the Obama administration to make it easier for states to cut Medicaid enrollment, setting up a fight over one of states' costliest programs. On Friday, 33 Republican governors and governors-elect plan to send a letter to the White House and congressional leaders asking them to remove a part of the health-care overhaul law. Under the rule, states that drop enrollees from the program would lose the federal money that … [Read more...]
Medicaid Pushes U.S. States Off ‘Cliff’ as Governors Seek Cuts
December 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
By Christopher Palmeri and Pat Wechsler | Bloomberg Businessweek Washington State may not pay for glasses anymore. Massachusetts already chopped dentures. As of Oct. 1, North Carolina no longer covers surgery for the clinically obese. Governors nationwide are taking a scalpel to Medicaid, the jointly run state and federal health-care program for 48 million poor Americans, half of whom are children. The single biggest expense for states, Medicaid consumes about 22 percent of their … [Read more...]
States Get Tough on Medicaid Program as Funds Run Dry
December 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Associated Press In Illinois, a pharmacist closes his business because of late Medicaid payments. In Arizona, a young father's liver transplant is canceled because Medicaid suddenly won't pay for it. In California, dentists pull teeth that could be saved because Medicaid doesn't pay for root canals. Across the country, state lawmakers have taken harsh actions to try to rein in the budget-busting costs of the health care program that serves 58 million poor and disabled Americans. Some … [Read more...]
SC Medicaid plan: End adult dental, hospice care
December 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Associated Press The state's Medicaid program plans to stop paying for adult dental, vision and hospice services and cut home health visits by a third for the state's elderly and disabled in February. Meanwhile, the agency plans to eliminate routine infant circumcisions, cut prescription drug benefits and shoes for diabetics. The reductions even include umbrella and crutch holders for people who use wheelchairs while telling people to use powered wheelchairs for seven years instead … [Read more...]
State Agencies, Including Medicaid, Told to Make Further Budget Cuts
December 9, 2010 By 1 Comment
By Robert T. Garret / The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN - State leaders, trying to dig out of a hole in the current two-year budget before the next one has to be whacked, ordered agencies Tuesday to further curb spending. Agency chiefs were told in a letter that they must reduce expenditures by 2.5 percent in the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. Managers of the state Medicaid program immediately announced they would cut another 1 percent from the fees paid to doctors, … [Read more...]
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