News In Healthcare

why not health insur­ance cov­er­age?  Mass­a­chu­setts was the first state in the nation to man­date auto insur­ance cov­er­age and it is the first state to imple­ment a uni­ver­sal health care cov­er­age plan.  Other states are start­ing to look to Mass­a­chu­setts as the model.  Universal health care cov­er­age, in some form, is expected to be a hot topic dur­ing the Pres­i­den­tial primaries.   Because of the con­tin­ued rise in the unin­sured pop­u­la­tion, both lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives seem will­ing to com­pro­mise.  Lib­er­als seem will­ing to give up the posi­tion of hav­ing a single-payer sys­tem, while con­ser­v­a­tives seem will­ing to allow the gov­ern­ment to get more involved.   The Mass­a­chu­setts plan may not fit across the entire nation, but it cer­tainly has ignited the debate across all state capitols.

It was reported today that about 3,800 peo­ple in Texas were denied health­care through Med­ic­aid in the first 3 months since the imple­men­ta­tion of the doc­u­men­ta­tion require­ments under the Deficit Reduc­tion Act of 2005.  The Act man­dated that as of July 2006, Med­ic­aid appli­cants have to show doc­u­men­tary proof that they were U.S. cit­i­zens.  Pre­vi­ously, all but 4 states only required a ver­bal con­fir­ma­tion of cit­i­zen­ship.  This new require­ment does not just affect new Med­ic­aid enrollees.  Any­one cur­rently in the sys­tem who has to renew their appli­ca­tion will also be required to show doc­u­men­ta­tion, typ­i­cally orig­i­nal doc­u­ments not pho­to­copies.  This will impact thou­sands of chil­dren and adults.  Kansas and Vir­ginia have also reported reduc­tions in enroll­ment to Med­ic­aid due to the new rules.