Monday, October 13, 2003

VA considers closing hospitals in overhaul
Washington Post story reprinted in the Boston Globe - "With little notice outside the veterans community, the Department of Veterans Affairs has embarked on an overhaul of its sprawling health care system to try to streamline an operation that the General Accounting Office has said is wasting more than $1 million a day on unnecessary facilities. The process -- known as Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services, or CARES -- began last year and is 'the first of its kind in history,' said Robert H. Roswell, the department's undersecretary for health..."  
  

States have put more limits on Medicaid health coverage
Story in the Statesman Journal - "With no economic relief in sight, all 50 states and the District of Columbia again are restricting health-care spending for poor women, children, elderly adults and the disabled, according to a study released last month. Many states already had made it harder or more expensive for low-income families to get free or low-cost health insurance through the $257 billion Medicaid program. The comprehensive survey, conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, found that state legislatures again tightened their health-care safety-net programs in the fiscal year 2004, which already has begun for states. States’ fiscal crisis is putting health care for low-income families and the elderly and disabled at risk, said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser commission." See also the Septmber 30 PULSE item for links to the Kaiser Commission reports and last Friday's posting on Rowland's testimony in Congress.