After months of simmering opposition, Democratic and Republican lawmakers are now lining up to kill Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's plan to provide health insurance for low-income residents. Democrats criticize the "Insure Missouri" plan, for not restoring coverage for all the people who were cut off Medicaid when that program was downsized three years ago. Republicans say it is a massive expansion of government-paid healthcare. The plan was originally pitched as an innovative way to leverage federal money to subsidize health insurance for adults who were employed, but still too poor to pay for insurance.
Maryland Citizens Health Initiative has received a three-year, $250,000-a-year grant from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. Formed in 1999, the initiative developed its first universal coverage plan in 2002 and persuaded about 2,000 community groups to be supporters. For the next several months, the organization will work to enroll people newly eligible for Medicaid. Although about 250,000 of the state's 750,000 uninsured will be eligible for Medicaid coverage, the state expects only about half of them to sign up, said Initiative representatives.
Voters in Alameda County, CA, have turned down a parcel tax to help build a new $750 million Children's Hospital in Oakland, a move that has stunned the hospital's chief executive and left him searching for financial alternatives. The nonprofit hospital had counted on raising $300 million to help fund a 250-bed, seismically safe facility near the current facility. The rest of the funding would have come from state bonds and private donations. Some of the money raised would have paid to upgrade the existing hospital and turn it into an outpatient facility.
Demand for affordable healthcare has produced 21,101 applications for the Healthy Indiana Plan for low-income adults, but key lawmakers said the state must find ways to cover people not currently eligible. Secretary Mitch Roob of the Family and Social Services Administration said that his agency has had to more than double the staff of the Healthy Indiana Plan because of the volume of applications. But some are criticizing the plan's restrictions that bar enrollment,to anyone eligible for an employer-covered health plan and to anyone whose household earns more than twice the federal poverty level.
The incoming top executive at Health Care Service Corp. is committed to the Chicago-based health plan's longtime growth strategy of staying away from public markets. But some observers say an acquisition of or merger with another Blues plan might be necessary for Health Care Service tp provide more bargaining muscle when they negotiate payment rates with doctors and hospitals.
A plan to provide access to healthcare for an estimated 20,000 uninsured residents in Howard County, MD, requires state legislation because of its unusual structure. If the legislation is approved by the Maryland General Assembly, the program will not begin until Oct. 1, 2008, to give state officials time to write regulations governing the "Healthy Howard" program.