News outlets report on legal immigrants and the cost of health reform in Massachusetts, new hospital fees in Ohio, coverage shortfalls in Tennessee and registered nurse practitioners in Florida.The Boston Globe: “More than 100 legal immigrants who were supposed to start receiving care yesterday under a new state health insurance plan will have to wait because the contractor hired to run the program has been unable to reach agreement with providers in Western Massachusetts. The immigrants, 123 in Pittsfield and 16 in Adams, are among roughly 5,000 in western and central Massachusetts who became eligible yesterday for coverage under the CeltiCare Health Plan of Massachusetts. But CeltiCare has been unable to negotiate contracts with hospitals in those two cities, said a state spokesman, Richard Powers” (Lazar, 12/2).WBUR: “When people debate the status of Massachusetts health reform, the key question tends to be: Is it affordable? More than 97 percent of all people in the state now have health insurance. Some of them get it through state-subsidized health plans, but those subsidies cost nearly a billion dollars a year. Some critics say that has come at the expense of other needs, one of them being the state’s safety net hospitals. Those are the hospitals that serve mostly poor patients, and many of them are in western Massachusetts and other places outside Boston” (Pfeiffer and Brown, 12/1).The Associated Press/Hudson Hub-Times: “Ohio hospitals, which have been cutting staff and medical services amid the recession, are bracing for a new state fee that began Nov. 30. The new franchise fee is based on a percentage of operating expenses at each hospital. It is expected to raise $718 million to help balance the state budget. Federal money will help offset most of the cost because hospitals will be partially reimbursed with higher Medicaid payments. But hospitals will have to find a way to cover the remaining $145 million” (12/2).The Tennessean: “As state funds run dry, Tennessee has cut off enrollment for two health insurance programs for low-income people, leaving the state at risk of a crisis, advocates say. Tennessee became the only state in the nation to have frozen enrollment for a children’s health insurance program funded largely with federal money, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C. The state stopped accepting new CoverKids applicants on Monday. At the same time, the state stopped enrolling adults in CoverTN, an insurance program designed for the self-employed and working poor. … With a projected $1.5 billion shortfall in the state’s $29 billion budget and every department facing cuts, there is no extra money to go around” (Sanchez and Ross, 12/2).Orlando Sentinel: “Every year for the past 16 years, the Florida Nurses Association has lobbied unsuccessfully to allow its most highly trained colleagues the right to prescribe painkillers and other controlled substances. When the new legislative session starts in March, the nurses once again will wage their war against the Florida Medical Association — the group that represents doctors and is opposed to changing the law. But this time, the nurses will have a battlefield advantage. They will be armed with a 2008 state Senate report that recommends giving qualified registered nurse practitioners authority to write prescriptions for controlled substances. The number of states that prohibit such authority has shrunk to just two: Florida and Alabama” (Quintero, 12/2).Health News Florida: “Florida’s Attorney General’s office has filed suit against a Tampa firm that it says made and sold more than 1,000 pricey back-pain therapy machines to physicians nationwide through ‘false, deceptive or misleading advertising.’ Most of the doctors were chiropractors.” The company is Axiom Worldwide, and Health News Florida notes that “Among other misleading statements, the complaint filed Nov. 19 in Hillsborough Circuit Court says, Axiom called its DRX 9000 spinal decompression system ‘the eighth wonder of the world’” (Gentry, 12/1).The Florida Times-Union reports on a Jacksonville area program that is designed to “steer people who get most of their medical care in emergency rooms into a doctor’s office” instead. “The people who joined the program in April and May were a sick bunch, having been hospitalized a total of 41 days over the previous three months. One of the program’s goals is to envelop such patients in a ‘system of care’ … that aims to prevent chronic health problems from sending these patients to a hospital.” The effort is part of increasing national emphasis on prevention of medical problems. “President Barack Obama, for one, has emphasized repeatedly the importance of including wellness initiatives in a reform plan. Millions in economic stimulus money went toward creating and expanding preventive-care programs, and both health overhaul bills before the House and Senate are loaded with preventive measures” (Cox, 12/1).
Posts Tagged ‘immigrants’
Legal Immigrants Still Lack Care In Massachusetts
Friday, July 2nd, 2010Federal health care bills exclude 1 million California immigrants
Sunday, March 7th, 2010No matter what health care bill emerges from Congress, roughly one in six uninsured Californians will be excluded because they are not legal residents.President Barack Obama still refers to the plan as “comprehensive health insurance reform,” although essentially none of its provisions are likely to be available to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, a group that typically receives no insurance at work and lacks the means to buy it on their own, advocates say.That means an estimated tens of thousands living in San Diego and Riverside counties will remain without insurance — whether the Senate ultimately passes a bill and no matter how generous the subsidies for the poor or punitive the penalties for those who refuse.”It will be out of the reach of many Americans. … That is not comprehensive,” said Jennifer Ng’andu, deputy director of the Health Policy Project at the National Council of La Raza.San Diego County alone may have 150,000 illegal immigrants who receive millions of dollars worth of health care —- paid for by taxpayers —- in local emergency rooms, according to various estimates.Excluding them has been a political flashpoint, with many conservatives arguing that providing more health care for people who are not legally in the country is both unaffordable and unfair.”It shouldn’t encourage future immigration or help out those who are here illegally now,” said Dustin Carnevale, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigrant Reform, a Washington-based group that advocates restricted immigration.FAIR estimates that U.S. taxpayers already spend $11 billion a year on health care for illegal immigrants, and that the cost would rise to $30 billion if they are offered the same subsidies as citizens in the health care bill.Such concerns have prompted some Democrats with a long record of supporting immigrant rights, including President Obama, to go out of their way to point out that they are not included in the legislation.However, their exclusion may have some unintended consequences.It means that a pool consisting of millions of potential customers who are typically younger and healthier than the general population will be kept out of the insurance exchanges. If illegal immigrants were allowed to enter the exchanges and receive health insurance, it would “reduce health care costs” for other participants, Ng’andu said.Still using the ERIllegal immigrants will continue to use emergency rooms, which cannot turn away patients based on their immigration status, as their first line of medical treatment, a practice that cost California hospitals an estimated $1.2 billion last year, according to the state Department of Health Services.And it may provide an added incentive for some employers to hire illegal immigrants rather than citizens in order to avoid new requirements that they provide health insurance to their workers, making it even more difficult for Americans to find jobs.Nearly 7 million California residents lack health insurance. Of that number, more than 1 million are not legal residents, according the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.Even the millions of illegal immigrants across the country who do buy insurance would be barred under the Senate health bill from qualifying for the most affordable rates.”Disease and illnesses do not discriminate based on immigration status,” Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, and several other Democrats wrote in an open letter to congressional leaders, seeking to have such provisions eliminated. “It is not rational to exclude individuals who are willing and able to share in the responsibility of paying into the system. There are also public health implications when a large portion of the U.S. population has severely limited access to health care coverage.”Yet a misconception persists that the measures will spend billions on illegal immigrants, wielded by critics as a reason to reject the bill.It was anger over that issue that prompted Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina to howl: “You lie!” at Obama as he addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this fall.However, both bills —- the one passed by the House earlier this month and the one currently before the Senate —- explicitly exclude illegal immigrants from receiving benefits.Senate bill most exclusiveBoth bills forbid anyone without legal immigration status from receiving government subsidies, which are intended for people who are too poor to buy their own insurance. The Senate bill goes further, saying that they cannot participate in the measure’s insurance exchanges. That means that even illegal immigrants who buy their own insurance will not be able to purchase the least expensive policies.”Undocumented immigrants are going to be hit two ways —- they won’t have papers to be here and (they) will be uninsured because even if they have the money to pay, they are not allowed to,” said Steven Wallace, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.That clause has prompted the greatest outcry from immigrant defenders in Congress, who point out that without insurance, the tab for immigrant care will continue to fall on taxpayers.”They’re going to go to the emergency rooms. They won’t have insurance. The costs will be shifted to the rest of us and to taxpayers. We should encourage our undocumented population to buy insurance with their own money,” said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., on the House floor earlier this month.Yet with the measure’s outcome resting on the votes of a handful of Democrats from swing states and districts, any changes to the immigration clauses are likely to make the bills even more restrictive.House compels coverageIn a further burden for some immigrants, the House bill requires residents to buy insurance regardless of their immigration status. However, it does not permit for government subsidies to those who are in the U.S. illegally.That means that some immigrants deemed as residents under IRS rules —- those who have been in the U.S. for 31 days of the current year and a total of 183 in the last three years —- must buy insurance even though they will receive no help in purchasing it.Some Republicans have pushed for tighter verification procedures in the health care bill to make certain that people who do not qualify for the government subsidies do not receive them. Conservatives contend that illegal immigrants will use fake documents to get coverage and that it will provide a new lure to come to the U.S.Others reject stricter verification procedures for fear it will drive away legitimate users who do not have drivers’ licenses, passports or easy access to birth certificates. Ng’andu estimated there are as many as 13 million citizens who lack such identification.”Efforts to exclude unauthorized immigrants and efforts to tighten verification make barriers for citizens to gain insurance,” said Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute
