affordable care act

Health care reform put on hold as lawmakers wrap up session

Jennifer Davidson — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:30:31 +0000

Rain is drizzling on the roughly 40 people standing in line outside the Good Samaritan Care Clinic in rural Mountain View, Missouri. Some have been standing for hours. At 5:30 pm, the clinic doors swing open, and the patients flood into a clean, bare bones waiting room.

Interfaith leaders gather for last-minute support of Medicaid expansion [video]

Harum Helmy — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:53:33 +0000

With the Missouri legislative session ending on Friday and a Republican supermajority that still won't budge, the hope to expand Medicaid in Missouri is pretty much dead for FY 2014.

It's so dead that perhaps the only thing that could bring it back to life is, well, interfaith prayers for a miracle.

Missouri health centers eligible for $3 million in insurance outreach fund

Harum Helmy — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:03:47 +0000

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced another round of funding to help Americans enroll in the Affordable Care Act's new online health insurance marketplace.

Helping Missourians navigate the ACA marketplace will likely be a collaborative effort

Harum Helmy — Wed, 08 May 2013 21:05:54 +0000

Many Missourians will likely need help navigating the Affordable Care Act's new health insurance marketplace that's set to go online by Oct. 1, but one analyst says there might not be enough time or federal funding to train those who can help.

Uncertainty looms over part-time faculty as Affordable Care Act approaches

Olga Khrustaleva — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:07:14 +0000

The Affordable Care Act requires employers to provide health insurance to everyone working more than 30 hours a week starting in 2014. This new regulation presents an issue in the academic world, as many adjunct faculty members across the country are having their working hours cut.

Rural Reads: Redneck reality, Obama's budget and critical access hospitals

Harum Helmy — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:21:21 +0000

Every Friday, KBIA's Health & Wealth Desk talks about the week's most interesting articles and reports on rural health, wealth and society issues.

'Redneck reality' and rural portrayal in cable television

Entertainment newspaper The A.V. Club muses on A&E's popular reality show Duck Dynasty, saying the show is the 21st century incarnation of old rural-themed sitcoms that once dominated network television. Think Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hee-Haw. It's an interesting read, but we were especially interested with the author's take on ways the television shows have to negotiate the rural-urban political disparities.

While the rural-themed programming of days gone by tended to depict the small Southern town as a bucolic haven for good-hearted folk, redneck reality is more apt to acknowledge the social and economic ills of the subcultures it depicts. These shows are sanitized for the protection of viewers with blue-state sensibilities; when they occur at all, political discussions tend to center on generalized platitudes about freedom and family, rather than specifics that might turn off half the potential audience.

H/T: The Rural Blog.

Did headlines about death rates at rural hospitals tell the wrong story?
The Daily Yonder is killing it with their opinion pieces this week.

Case in point: A new report made headlines last week, saying death rates are rising at rural, geographically isolated hospitals. But an opinion writer for the Yonder says news reports are not telling the real story of these so-called critical access hospitals:

The patients in the small rural hospital with heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia have become a select population. A large proportion has decided that they are through paying all the human costs of the miracles of modern medicine. They have made the decision to stay in familiar surroundings near home and family.
The researchers found that 13.3% of the patients at critical access hospitals with one of the three conditions died, compared to 11.4 % of the medical center patients. Given all the terrible tools that modern medical centers have to work with, I’m amazed they only manage a small difference in patient survival over the most basic, little country hospitals in America.

Obama's proposed delay in cuts could cool off MO medicaid expansion debate

Harum Helmy — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:58:01 +0000

In his proposed budget, President Barack Obama wants to delay cuts to federal payments to hospitals, keeping the payments intact for an extra year. That could affect the debate over expanding Medicaid in Missouri.

Through what’s called the disproportionate share hospital payments or DSH payments, the federal government gives money to hospitals that provide a lot of free care to patients who are uninsured and can’t afford services. The Affordable Care Act, though, includes significant cuts to DSH payments.

Why rural Missouri hospitals are rooting for Medicaid expansion

Harum Helmy and Jennifer Davidson — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:37:55 +0000

The uphill congressional battle to expand Medicaid in Missouri is making rural hospitals that serve areas with high poverty levels really, really nervous. KSMU's Jennifer Davidson has the story.

Nixon open to GOP-backed Medicaid plan, but with changes

Marshall Griffin — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:39:45 +0000

Governor Jay Nixon says he could support the House Republicans’ alternate Medicaid proposal, but only if some crucial changes are made. He met with the GOP caucus today to discuss his Medicaid expansion proposal and their plans to reform the system. Nixon told reporters that any proposal still needs to expand Medicaid to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

Will Missouri's GOP-backed Medicaid expansion get federal approval?

Harum Helmy — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:46:52 +0000

Missouri’s Republican-led House on Tuesday struck down Democrats’ attempts to include Medicaid expansion in the state’s budget.

If that scenario sounds familiar to you, it’s because these rejections have happened a few times before. On Feb. 25, two House committees rejected Rep. Jake Hummel’s (D-St. Louis) bill to expand Medicaid under the terms of the Affordable Care Act. On March 14, the Senate Appropriations committee voted down the Senate Democrats’ version of the expansion bill.

Rep. Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) was in one of the committees that struck down Rep. Hummel's Medicaid expansion proposal. Barnes has since introduced his own version of the expansion -- outlined in House Bill 700.