Ballooning Medicaid Costs Strain Bay State Budget
The money, it seems, is never enough.
Governor Deval Patrick approved a record $9.6 billion last July for the state’s health insurance program for the poor — sufficient, he assumed, to last a year. But the program’s costs quickly outpaced expectations, forcing the governor to approve an additional $329 million in October and then seek $258 million more, which lawmakers approved last week.
And even that may not last, with six months remaining in the budget year.
(The following article from the Lewiston Sun-Journal is dated November 30, 2010)
State's Integration With Health Care Law Clouded By Potential Legal Challenge
AUGUSTA — The joint legislative committee charged with establishing the state's implementation guidelines for the federal Affordable Care Act met Monday for what will likely be the final time. It set the stage for a looming partisan battle over Maine potentially joining a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
The committee's report, due out next week, is designed to highlight ways Maine can integrate, change or eliminate its existing health care system, Dirigo, to conform with mandates in the federal law. But hovering over the report are statements by Gov.-elect Paul LePage and his staff that they will do away with Dirigo and fight the health care law.
California Is Cutting Preventable Hospitalizations
California is doing a better job at cutting the number of unnecessary hospitalizations, but members of some minority groups, particularly African Americans, are still being hospitalized too often, according to recently released state reports that cite lack of access to regular healthcare as a prime source of the problem.
The Long And Winding Road To The Emergency Room
He was the first patient of the day, dropped off at the emergency room by the police or a family member — a man in his 50s, unshaved, stumbling, engulfed in the pungent aroma of alcohol.
When he blew into the breathalyzer’s strawlike tube, the readout was 0.18, more than twice the legal limit.
“I get seizures,” he said, referring to the dangerous reaction some people experience when they abruptly stop drinking. Then, as if to prove it, he held out trembling hands. Each bore the nicks and scars of a hard-lived life.
Fear of health care rationing
Posted Oct. 19, 2010, at 10:06 a.m.
I’m a rational guy. I can, after all, (just barely) watch the Patriots trade away Randy Moss without my kidneys bleeding. What really makes me irrational, however, is when smart people who lead us complain about the rationing of health care as though it is an evil conspiracy of those who favor reform of the American health care system to deprive us of care we need. They and we should know better, because rationing has always been a part of health care and, in its better form, must be.
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