Friday, March 04, 2005

News Coverage of State Medicaid DevelopmentsA summary at the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report - with many links to related news articles - of developments in the states related to Medicaid. States covered include Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee and West Virginia. See also their related summary of opinion pieces appearing in US newspapers.  
  

Analyst: Bush Plan Saves Less on Medicaid AP story in the Las Vegas Sun - "Congress' top budget analyst estimates that President Bush's plans to slow spending for Medicaid and other benefits would save less money than the White House estimates, The Associated Press has learned. According to preliminary estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Bush's proposals for trimming farm, veterans, student loans and other benefits would save $50.8 billion over the next five years. That's $11.1 billion, or 18 percent, less than the $62 billion in savings the White House estimated when Bush released his new budget last month. The re-estimate could complicate the Republican-run Congress' job of writing its own budget beginning next week. That is because it means budget writers will have to find even more savings than Bush proposed to achieve the same amount of deficit reduction he claims - a task many lawmakers will find painful..."  
  

Mental health report lists TennCare savings (Tennessee) Nashville City Paper story - "Advocates for the mentally ill released a report on savings in mental health funding in hopes of keeping their clients on the TennCare rolls. The report, issued by the Tennessee chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), is called Finding Common Solutions for Funding of Mental Health Services in Tennessee. Sita Diehl, executive director of NAMI Tennessee, said the report is a direct response to the state’s proposed TennCare reform and the prospect that about 30,000 people with severe mental illness would be cut from the state health program." See also a related announcement and the full report at the NAMI web site.