Pepper Legacy Today
Florida’s statewide privatization of Medicaid has barely reached its first anniversary and already the rate-setting bait and switch has shifted into high gear. Private managed care companies that now control health care for 3.5 million Floridians have asked for a 12 percent payment increase for the 2015-16 fiscal year, which would more than wipe out […]
Even as public attention is focused on the Affordable Care Act, another health care overhaul is underway in many states: an ambitious effort to restrain the ballooning Medicaid cost of long-term care as people live longer and survive more disabling conditions. At least 26 states, including California, Florida, Illinois and New York, are rolling out […]
When Hurricane Sandy flooded two adult homes in Queens, hundreds of disabled, elderly or mentally ill residents were caught in the surge. After weeks in public shelters, they were bused, over their objections, to a dilapidated four-story building called King’s Hotel, in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn. Many had not showered in days. Crammed three […]
Health care for the poor consumes a big chunk of the state budget. Managed care companies promise less waste and fraud — an understandable concept when providers falsify bills and parents use emergency rooms to treat sniffling children. “Medicaid is irretrievably broken and we need to start over,” says state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who […]
It’s been a tragic waste of money and lives.As the managed care lobby portrayed it, the Nursing Home Diversion program sounded like a great bargain: Give us Florida’s frail, older people who are candidates for a nursing home. Pay us less than the nursing home rate and we will care for them in assisted living […]
