New Jersey healthcare providers, healthcare advocates and legislators will stage a rally on the steps of the statehouse to protest healthcare cuts in Gov. Corzine's proposed state budget. Corzine has proposed a 14% cut in state aid for hospitals in his $33 billion budget, which some say will create an access-to-care crisis. New Jersey has lost 30% of its hospitals since 1992.
Healthcare advocates fear that 140,000 TennCare enrollees will lose their benefits in the coming year, and are urging legislators to create a safety net. The Tennessee Health Care Campaign calls for using up to $125 million of existing TennCare budget money to treat the sickest of these enrollees, who have been exempt from annual eligibility checks and are expected to face re-evaluation. The funds would be used to treat about 20,000 people with severe mental illness and life-threatening conditions.
Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has described his challengers' healthcare plans as a "move closer to a nationalized healthcare system." But that is a stretch: To nationalize means to transfer ownership or control to the government. There's still a vast distance between what the Democratic candidates have proposed and nationalized healthcare.
The Iowa Legislature has agreed to give medium and large hospitals a 1% increase in Medicaid money, which hospitals have promised to use to increase nurses' salaries. According to a 2006 federal survey, Iowa ranks 52nd in nurses' pay among the 54 states and territories.
An expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that legislators approved last year has won federal approval, making low-cost coverage available to more kids in moderate-income Indiana households. The expansion will bring more than 5,000 children into Indiana's SCHIP program this year and as many as 10,000 eventually.
In Indiana, SCHIP is combined with Medicaid to create the Hoosier Healthwise insurance plan for children.
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services has launched the Medical Electronic Data Interchange, which keeps data such as medication and immunization histories, lab orders and hospitalizations for Medicaid patients. In addition to keeping track of Medicaid patient data, officials say the database also helps reduce redundant care, especially when someone is seeing more than one doctors.