Thursday, October 21, 2004

State Health Facts
This outstanding web site from the Kaiser Family Foundation has been redesigned and its data updated - "Data presented on statehealthfacts.org are a selection of key health and health policy issues collected from a variety of public and private sources, including: original Kaiser Family Foundation reports, data from public websites, and information purchased from private organizations. To improve users ability to make comparisons across the states, statehealthfacts.org attempts to provide information that is collected with a consistent methodology across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As a result, information on statehealthfact.org is often obtained from Federal data sources, many of which are not able to collect sufficiently large estimates of particular racial/ethnic groups in every state."  
  

Nearly 1.7 Million Veterans Lack Health Care, Report Finds
Reuters Health story at Medscape - "Nearly 1.7 million U.S. veterans under the age of 65 had no health care coverage in 2003 -- no access to private insurance, to Medicare or Medicaid or to the Veterans Affairs health program -- health care advocates said on Tuesday. Many had seen combat in Vietnam or the Gulf Wars and most were employed, the Physicians for a National Health Program and Public Citizen said in a joint report." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free]. The full report, America’s Neglected Veterans: 1.7 Million Who Served Have No Health Coverage, is available in Adobe Acrobat format from the Physicians for a National Health Program web site.  
  

National Estimates of Mental Health Insurance Benefits
HHS Study (94 pages, in Adobe Acrobat format) - "This study provides estimates of the number of individuals in the United States in 1999 who had mental health benefits as a part of their health insurance coverage, the subset of those individuals who had mental health benefits that met or exceeded a benchmark level of generosity, the number of individuals with parity in their mental health benefits, and the number of individuals potentially subject to state and Federal mental health parity laws. Mental health benefits are assessed in terms of the types of services covered (inpatient c a re, outpatient care, and prescription d rugs), dollar limits (annual expenditure s and lifetime expenditures), utilization limits (number of days of inpatient care and number of outpatient visits), and cost sharing (deductibles, co-insurance, and co-payments)..."  
  

Medicaid overhaul outlined (New Hampshire)
Concord Monitor story - "Gov. Craig Benson has proposed a series of sweeping changes to New Hampshire's Medicaid program and he wants to begin working immediately with federal health officials to implement them. Benson's overhaul would reduce the state' s nursing home population by one-third, set up private health accounts for pregnant women and families with children, and give the state more control over how disabled people get medical care, among other changes. The proposal, outlined in a 15-page report sent to health officials in Washington last month, has not been made public yet. For months, legislators, Medicaid recipients and their advocates have awaited word on the proposed changes. The Monitor obtained a copy of Benson's report earlier this week."  
  

State rejects payment cuts for Medicaid (Indiana)
Indianapolis Star story - "The state reversed itself Tuesday on a cut in Medicaid reimbursement for in-patient psychiatric care after hospital representatives showed it would reduce the number of Indiana's mental health beds. If the cut in the daily reimbursement rates were to take effect Nov. 1, as originally planned, at least seven general hospitals and three community mental health centers across Indiana would reduce or close their psychiatric units, and all five for-profit psychiatric hospitals would close their children's units, a study showed."