Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medicaid Expansion Adds 7.8 Million Patients To Private Insurance Rolls Last Year
Forbes: Insurers Add 8 Million Medicaid Patients Thanks To Obamacare And GOP
The expansion of Medicaid benefits for poor Americans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the general move away from fee-for-service medicine helped boost enrollment in private health plans by 7.8 million beneficiaries in the last year, according to a new report. Managed-care plans are taking on an unprecedented role in providing health coverage to poor Americans thanks in part to more states opting to go along with the Medicaid expansion. ... “Even if no other state expands Medicaid (under the ACA), managed-care is going to increase its market share because states are moving away from fee-for-service medicine,” Jeff Myers, chief executive of Medicaid Health Plans of America (MHPA), the trade group and lobby that represents Medicaid plans, said in an interview. The report was released last week at MHPA’s annual conference. (Japsen, 11/15)
Fox News: As Calif. Moves On Medicaid Expansion, Study Finds Half Of Illegal Immigrants Qualify
Over half of all illegal immigrants in California earn incomes so low that they would be eligible for the state Medicaid system Medi-Cal, a new study has found, just as California is about to extend the health insurance to children in the country illegally. (Shaw, 11/13)
Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser: Medicaid Expansion In Alabama: The Next Big Battle?
Before December of last year, Gov. Robert Bentley closed, locked and barred the door to Medicaid expansion. ... Bentley on Thursday appeared to signal a desire to crack the door, saying at a conference his office was "looking" at expansion. Friday, his office said nothing had changed. ... If the governor treads lightly on Medicaid expansion, it's because the issue is a fiery bed of coals for a southern politician. Medicaid expansion could bring public health benefits to Alabamians, and may be the only thing that keeps the state's rural hospitals open amid looming cuts to one of their major revenue sources. Danne Howard, executive vice president and chief policy officer for the Alabama Hospital Association, said Friday 70 percent of hospitals in the state operate in the red. (Lyman, 11/14)
The Columbus Post-Dispatch: Hospitals’ Medicaid Support To Change
Taxpayers subsidize the cost of training doctors at dozens of hospitals across Ohio through the Medicaid program, which is funded by the federal and state governments. But the formulas used by Ohio Medicaid to divvy up nearly $250 million in annual graduate medical-education funding among those hospitals haven’t been updated in 28 years. (Sutherly, 11/16)
