Once Hospital Groups Roared Over Medicaid Changes. Now They Sit Mostly Silent On Sidelines.
Hospitals are mostly raising objections to the practical impediments to adding work requirements to the health program, instead of opposing changes to the program in general. Medicaid news comes out of Virginia, Connecticut and Ohio, as well.
Modern Healthcare:
Hospital Groups—Leaders In Last Year's Medicaid Battle—Stay Mum On Controversial Work Requirements
Politically powerful state hospital associations and their members spent most of last year battling congressional Republican's efforts to sharply cut Medicaid spending and roll back its expansion to low-income adults. In fact, they're widely credited with playing a key role in blocking those changes. Now they're nervously facing narrower but still significant GOP Medicaid moves that are projected to push tens of thousands of low-income people out of the program by imposing work requirements, premium payments, rigorous income reporting rules, and benefit lock-outs for failure to comply. (Meyer, 3/9)
The Washington Post:
Va. General Assembly Wraps Up Regular Session But Still Can’t Solve Medicaid
Virginia’s General Assembly wrapped up its 2018 regular session Saturday with its most important task unfinished. At an impasse over whether to expand Medicaid to some 400,000 eligible Virginians, the legislature failed to pass a state budget before adjournment and will have to take that up at a special session. That stumble eclipsed several significant accomplishments during the 60-day legislative session, including a sweeping overhaul of electric utility regulation and several pieces of criminal justice revisions that had been stalled for years. (Schneider and Vozzella, 3/10)
The Associated Press:
Medicaid Expansion Supporters In Virginia Have New Hope
Milton Batalona's recent breathing problems were so bad he could barely walk 10 feet without getting winded. His coworkers at the grocery store where he works urged him to get treatment right away, but the 34-year-old from Yorktown, Virginia, said he was too scared he'd get stuck with a bill he can't afford. "They kept saying, 'Go to the emergency room, go to the emergency room' and I was like, 'I can't afford the emergency room," he said. (Suderman, 3/9)
Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Assembly Passes Insurance Bills Meant To Help With Rising Costs, But Some Fear Further Destabilization Of Individual Market
The General Assembly has passed some bills meant to address some of the problems with the individual markets — mainly that premiums are too high for some Virginians to afford. (O'Connor, 3/9)
The CT Mirror:
CT Bill Would Require That Certain Medicaid Enrollees Work
A number of legislative Republicans are advocating a bill aimed at imposing work requirements for some Medicaid recipients while also doing away with exemptions from work requirements now allowed to some food stamp recipients in Connecticut. (Rigg, 3/12)
Kaiser Health News:
Medicaid Is Rural America’s Financial Midwife
Brianna Foster, 23, lives minutes away from Genesis Hospital, the main source of health care and the only hospital with maternity services in southeastern Ohio’s rural Muskingum County. Proximity proved potentially lifesaving last fall when Foster, pregnant with her second child, Holden, felt contractions at 31 weeks — about seven weeks too soon. Genesis was equipped to handle the situation — giving Foster medication and an injection to stave off delivery. After his birth four weeks later – still about a month early, at 5 pounds 12 ounces — Holden was sent to the hospital’s special care nursery for monitoring. (Luthra, 3/12)
