About 1,000 people packed the Great Hall at Hartford's Union Station for the presentation of a comprehensive plan to eventually provide healthcare coverage to all Connecticut residents. The proposal is called SustiNet, and is drawn from the state motto to "reflect the proposal's commitment to health and sustainability," according to the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut. Several years of research and work by a host of interest groups led to the proposal, said Janet Davenport, vice president of communications for the foundation.
Rising unemployment and the sinking economy are driving sharp increases in the number of Washington, DC-area families seeking state health insurance for their children, and more of these families are qualifying for coverage. The increases are particularly pronounced in the region's largest and wealthiest jurisdictions as employers cut benefits and eliminate jobs. In Fairfax County, for example, requests for the state's insurance program for children were up 16% between November 2007 and November 2008. In Alexandria County, caseloads increased 20%, and in Loudoun County, they were up 16.5%.
Congress is poised to passed a bill to provide health insurance to millions of low-income children. The House Democratic leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said the bill was "very much like" legislation twice vetoed by President Bush in 2007. Legal authority for the program expires on March 31. Congressional Democrats said they had decided to add a major provision allowing states to restore health insurance benefits to legal immigrants under 21, a goal of Hispanic groups since those benefits were terminated in 1996.
Nashville must look for "more viable long-term options" to fund the city's cash-strapped safety-net hospital after years of costly subsidies and loan extensions, Mayor Karl Dean wrote in a letter to the hospital's board chairman. Dean told Metro Hospital Authority Chairman Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. that his administration would look at ways to reduce Metro's expenses in the operation of Nashville General Hospital at Meharry. The city gave the hospital authority a $47.3 million subsidy—reflecting a 5% cut—for the fiscal year that started July 1. General Hospital regularly struggles because so many of its patients have little or no health insurance, making it tough to get reimbursed for many of the services it provides.
In a settlement with UnitedHealth Group, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has ordered an overhaul of the databases the industry uses to determine how much of a medical bill is paid when a patient uses an out-of-network doctor. A statement from Cuomo's office said the industry had engaged in "a scheme to defraud consumers" by systematically underpaying the nation's patients by hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade. The move is part of a settlement with UnitedHealth Group, which operates the industry databases. It results from a yearlong investigation by Cuomo's office that concluded the data had understated the true market rates of medical care by up to 28%.
Iowa officials will delay making Gov. Chet Culver's 1.5% budget cut to Medicaid services in hopes of landing federal money to offset the loss, a spokesman for Iowa's human services department said. Culver's across-the-board cut amounts to roughly $10 million for the state's Medicaid programs. But for every state dollar cut, $2 in federal matching money is jeopardized. That amounts to a $30 million service cut, Department of Human Services spokesman Roger Munns said.