Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Highlights CQ HealthBeat Coverage of Latest Medicaid News Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report on recent developments related to Medicaid, based on reporting in CQ HealthBeat. One item of particular note is that "The federal commission tasked with recommending ways to cut $10 billion over five years from Medicaid has 60 days until its report is due; however, neither the commission's members nor a meeting schedule have been announced..."  
  

Cost-Effectiveness Data Prove MH Care Won't Break Bank  Psychiatric News story - "New analytical methodologies demonstrate that treatment for psychiatric disorders can be cost-effective. Members of APA's Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing took a new look at a long-standing problem at APA's 2005 annual meeting in Atlanta in the session 'Funding for Psychiatry: From the Irrational to the Rational.' That intractable problem is what former APA President Paul Appelbaum, M.D., called the 'systematic defunding of the mental health system.' Edward Maxwell, M.D., opened the session with an overview of the funding trends and issues that have resulted in a serious discrepancy between the costs to provide needed mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) services and resources devoted to them. Maxwell is an APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellow at Brown University..." See also Where Does the Money Come From? And Where Does It Go? at the same source.