medicaid

With so much speculation on whether Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) will support the health reform bill finalized by the Senate Finance Committee last week, the world might be surprised to learn that some panel Democrats are also wary of the legislation. Yet Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have both “refused to pledge [...]

A little after midnight, nearing the end of yesterday’s marathon health reform debate in the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) had the stage, and the audience fell strangely silent. Rockefeller talked about his experiences as a VISTA volunteer in Appalachia decades ago; he talked about the destitution and absence of health care in [...]

Deep into the Senate Finance Committee’s marathon debate over health care reform, Democrats Thursday night killed a GOP proposal that would have forced legal immigrants to wait five years before getting federal subsidies on the proposed state insurance exchanges.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), sponsor of the amendment, said it would simply align exchange policies with those [...]

In a perfect display of how much of the Senate Finance Committee’s public debate over health reform is really not public, the panel this afternoon approved — without discussion and without a roll-call vote — a controversial amendment granting states the flexibility to drop some Medicaid patients after 2010.

Among the most contentious questions facing Senate Finance Committee members this week revolves around how much flexibility the states should have to set their own Medicaid eligibility under the Democrats’ sweeping health reform proposal. While it’s often discussed that the bill, written by Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), would open Medicaid coverage to most everyone [...]

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee have come up with all sorts of approaches designed to kill the Democrats’ plans to expand Medicaid to cover most everyone living beneath 133 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $29,000 for a family of four.
The latest attempt came late Wednesday from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who pushed [...]

Just in time to throw another twist into the health reform debate, the Government Accountability Office reported today that Medicaid is paying to fill prescriptions for the dead.
After studying Medicaid claims in five states — California, New York, North Carolina, Illinois and Texas — GAO found more than 1,800 cases, between fiscal years 2006 and [...]

The Senate finance panel just shot down an amendment to the committee’s health reform bill that would have required beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to show a photo ID in order to enroll. Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the senior Republican on the Finance Committee and sponsor of the proposal, said the [...]

It’s no mystery that states have struggled through the economic downturn, as revenues have dropped with rising unemployment and falling consumer spending, while increased enrollment in social services like Medicaid have just made problems worse. But will Congress treat all states equal in the middle of this nationwide state budget squeeze? Not if some members [...]

As we mentioned in this piece earlier this week, the reluctance of the country’s physicians to accept new Medicaid patients is a real threat to undermining the effectiveness of the Democrats’ plans to expand the low-income health coverage program. After all, what good is insurance if no one accepts it?
There’s some debate about the reasons [...]