University Hospitals has announced a 10-year expansion plan that includes a new children's hospital and major renovations at the main hospital in Iowa City. The plan would cost $700 million to $850 million, and funding would come from hospital revenues and private donations. The aging hospital's facilities need to be updated, especially as patient admissions increase and patient needs become more complex, University officials said.
Frustrated that leaders in Prince George County, MD, have no solution for their hospital system's financial troubles, the county's legislative delegation have introduced a bill that would transfer ownership of the system to a state authority. The takeover is designed to help stabilize the hospital system, which is includes of Prince George's Hospital Center in Cheverly, Laurel Regional Hospital, and the Bowie Health Campus. The system has been losing money for years, in part because many of the 180,000 patients it treats each year are uninsured.
The percentage of uninsured children in Florida is increasing, even though most of them are eligible for government health coverage programs, according to a study by the University of Florida's Institute for Child Health Policy. The study found that 12.6 percent, or 547,984, of the children under the age of 18 in Florida are uninsured. However, 72 percent of the uninsured children in Florida are eligible for some type of public coverage.
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.