Not having health insurance accounts for deaths of 650 Michiganders a year, or nearly two every day, according to a report from national nonprofit consumer health organization Families USA. The problem is growing in Michigan as more employers drop health coverage and people find insurance premiums too costly to purchase their own coverage, said Families USA representatives.
In a decade in which premiums have nearly doubled and the number of uninsured continues to grow, some people are enrolling in faith-based alternatives to health insurance. Christian Care Medi-Share, for example, is a charitable ministry that collects monthly contributions and disburses them among members to pay medical bills. Critics are wary of such organizations, however, because they operate with little government oversight and don't guarantee coverage.
Pennsylvania House Democrats have introduced a plan to roll out state-subsidized health insurance for about 270,000 uninsured Pennsylvania adults over a five-year period. Backers of the plan promoted it as the next logical step after recent state laws that cover children and pay prescription costs for the elderly. Residents ages 19 to 64 who meet income guidelines and who have gone six months without insurance would qualify for what would be known as the Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care program.
The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare is proposing taking about $100 million from 33 hospitals in Philadelphia and Allegheny (PA) Counties so that it can increase Medicaid funding in those counties. The department says most hospitals will make money in the deal because Pennsylvania can use the new assessment to leverage more federal funding for Medicaid. Representatives from the hospitals involved, however, remain skeptical.
The federal government has reached a $666 million settlement with 667 hospitals that had sued for back payments stemming from shifts in Medicare reimbursement policies. The deal is among the largest government settlements paid to healthcare providers, and is the result of negotiations under way since April 2006.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has reversed an earlier decision and will continue to cover the use of an increasingly popular procedure to detect heart disease. CMS had misgivings about the scanning procedure due a lack of evidence to justify paying for the tests under Medicare. The agency now says that it will continue to leave payments for the scans up to the local insurance carriers it employs to oversee medical claims.