Month: December 2022

Republican-led legislatures have repeatedly thwarted Medicaid expansion in a dozen conservative states, despite high numbers of uninsured residents. In recent years, supporters of expansion have found success with another strategy: letting voters decide.

Since 2017, Medicaid expansion has passed in seven states where the issue was put on the ballot, adopting the Affordable Care Act provision that would grant health insurance to hundreds of thousands living at or near the poverty line.

Last month, South Dakota voters adopted the program after bypassing the state’s conservative legislature. But any momentum from that November election victory was fleeting.

In Florida and Wyoming, the two remaining states where voters have the option, high costs and other hurdles baked into the ballot process render it almost impossible to enact a measure, advocates say.

“Each of those states, for different reasons, is particularly difficult to move a Medicaid expansion ballot

East St. Louis, Illinois.- Cuando era niño, Mykael Ash disfrutaba recogiendo conchas marinas cerca de la costa del golfo de Mississippi, en donde vive su abuelo. Los viajes a la playa eran una parte habitual de su vida.

“Es energía pacífica”, dijo Ash. “Especialmente cuando apoyas esa concha marina sobre la oreja”.

A los 32 años, todavía colecciona conchas. Pero el terreno es diferente en esta ciudad de 18,000 habitantes. Ash camina sobre concreto en lugar de arena, y en vez de conchas recoge cartuchos dejados por las balas y cintas amarillas de seguridad mientras camina para hacer ejercicio.

“De repente, un día me di cuenta”, dijo: podría usar estos cartuchos en sus obras de arte.

La violencia con armas de fuego ha sido un problema persistente en East St. Louis, que, para frustración de muchos residentes, tenía una de las tasas de homicidios más altas de cualquier ciudad de

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Congress has a tentative framework for government spending through this fiscal year. Now, lawmakers must fill in the blanks, including on key health care provisions, and get it passed. The Biden administration will send more free covid-19 home tests to Americans after initial fears the program was running out of money.

And there’s plenty of news coming in from the states, where this week a Texas judge tossed out a lawsuit based on the state’s so-called vigilante abortion law, and the governor of Florida is asking for a grand jury investigation into harm caused by covid vaccines.

This week’s panelists are Mary Agnes Carey of KHN, Rachel Cohrs of Stat, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Rebecca Adams

In April 2016, government auditors asked a Blue Cross Medicare Advantage health plan in Minnesota to turn over medical records of patients treated by a podiatry practice whose owner had been indicted for fraud.

Medicare had paid the Blue Cross plan more than $20,000 to cover the care of 11 patients seen by Aggeus Healthcare, a chain of podiatry clinics, in 2011.

Blue Cross said it couldn’t locate any records to justify the payments because Aggeus shut down in the wake of the indictment, which included charges of falsifying patient medical files. So Blue Cross asked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for a “hardship” exemption to a strict requirement that health plans retain these files in the event of an audit.

CMS granted the request and auditors removed the 11 patients from a random sample of 201 Blue Cross plan members whose records were reviewed.

A review of