February 2011 – Healthcare-NOW

Disheartening response to adultBasic fiasco

A DelCo Daily Times editorial – Today is D Day for close to 42,000 working Pennsylvanians in terms of their health insurance. Today adultBasic, a state program designed to provide health insurance for residents ages 19 through 64 who meet income-eligibility requirements, has officially run out of money. More than 1,700 Delaware County residents who…

New York Medicaid Panel Backs Cuts

By Thomas Kaplan for the New York Times – ALBANY — In an unexpected vote, a committee appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to cut billions in health care spending approved on Thursday an annual spending cap and across-the-board reductions for all Medicaid providers. The vote, on 79 cost-cutting measures, was part of a sweeping…

Wisconsin Union Battle Masks Medicaid Tensions

By Christopher Weaver for Kaiser Health News – Hiding out at a secret location in Illinois, Wisconsin state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout ends every media interview with the same warning: Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on public employee unions is overshadowing another part of his budget plan that could shred the state’s health care safety net.…

Health care plan explained

Universal care, guaranteed coverage touted in proposal By Charles McMahon for SeaCoastOnline.com – PORTSMOUTH — A national push to create a single-payer health care system that would allow all citizens the right to affordable health insurance was presented before Seacoast residents Wednesday night at the public library. More than 50 people attended the Health Care…

In Pa., Low-Income Adults Soon May Be Uninsured

By Jenny Gold for NPR – When Paula Michele Boyle first received the letter earlier this month explaining that her health insurance coverage was being terminated, she took it personally, thinking maybe the insurer had discovered something in her history to make her ineligible. But then the Philadelphia resident read on and realized that it…

Government more efficient?

A Milford Daily News Editorial – A [Massachusetts] official may have gone off-script last week, but what he had to say is an important contribution to the state’s ongoing debate over reining in health care costs. Terry Dougherty, director of MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, was addressing a budget hearing in Boston Friday, State House…

Obama administration unlikely to block Arizona plan to cut 250,000 from Medicaid rolls

By N.C. Aizenman for the Washington Post – The Obama administration would permit a controversial plan by Arizona’s governor to cut an estimated 250,000 impoverished adults from Medicaid, despite a provision in the new health-care law barring states from tightening their eligibility standards for the program, federal officials said Wednesday. Gov. Jan Brewer (R) formally…

Ariz. may require hospitals to check citizenship

By Michelle Price for the Washington Post – PHOENIX — Republican lawmakers want to widen Arizona’s illegal immigration crackdown with a proposal to require hospitals to check on whether patients are in the country legally, causing outrage among medical professionals who fear becoming de facto immigration agents under the law. The medical industry ripped the…

The Insurers’ Real Agenda for Change

By Wendell Potter for the Huffington Post – The media had lots of health care news to obsess about last week. A federal judge ruled the health care reform law unconstitutional, and Senate Republicans tried in vain to repeal the law. But most of the press paid virtually no attention to a potentially much more…

David Bos – In Memoriam

By Lisa Larges – David Bos, a Presbyterian Minister, friend and ally who died this past week was a man with the soul of a poet and the heart of a prophet. The two flowed together in a kind of serene loveliness – David, as I knew him, was gracious and easy, thoughtful in what…