medicaid

The Detroit Medical Center’s Harper University Hospital passed an important inspection this month.

Harper Hospital could’ve lost Medicare payments after a Dec. 13, 2018 inspection listed several violations, including failure to accurately record time of death for three patients, "resulting in the potential for the inability to recover tissue and/or organs for use in transplant."

Starting October 1, Michigan Medicaid will expand coverage for a new class of hepatitis C drugs. A twelve week course of treatment with the new direct-acting antiviral drugs clears the virus completely in most patients.

Michigan's Medicaid system limits access to the drugs to those who have later stage liver scarring. Liver scarring is staged from F0 to F4. Currently, only patients with scarring from F2 to F4 were eligible for the drugs. Beginning on October 1, patients with milder F1 liver scarring will also be able to receive treatment.

A new University of Michigan study finds expanded Medicaid coverage is increasing access to family planning and birth control for poor women in Michigan.

Michigan expanded its Medicaid program in 2014 as part of the Affordable Care Act.   In all, 32 states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid programs under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

More than 600,000 Michiganders receive health care coverage through the Healthy Michigan program.  

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he and a key lawmaker have conceptually agreed on a plan to impose work or training requirements for Medicaid recipients, but some details are still being worked out.

The Republican governor told The Associated Press Thursday there's been a "meeting of the minds" and "we're in a pretty good place."

He confirms previous comments from Sen. Mike Shirkey - the bill sponsor - that a proposed 29-hour work requirement would instead be 20 hours.

Four patient-care organizations have come out in opposition to a bill that would create work requirements for Medicaid recipients.

In a written statement, the Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society said three-quarters of Medicaid recipients already work.

“For a variety of reasons a chronically ill person may not be able to meet that work requirement and then they may lose coverage of what, in many cases, is life saving coverage," said Sarah Poole with the American Heart Association. 

The state House opened hearings today on a bill that would require many able-bodied adults on Medicaid to find work, or be in school. If the bill is adopted, Michigan would have one of the toughest Medicaid work requirements in the nation.

Michigan could soon require certain people to work for their Medicaid benefits. 

Some lawmakers in Lansing want people to work to get Medicaid. The Senate introduced a bill Thursday. It would add work requirements to the Medical Assistance Program, or Medicaid.

Medicaid is a federal program that gives low-income people – along with children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with disabilities - health insurance.

If passed, able-bodied adults would be required to work or continue school for 30 hours per week as a condition of receiving medical assistance.

Michigan is extending a deadline to try to ensure that no one with Medicaid insurance loses access to their doctor. 

About 1.7 million people in Michigan rely on Medicaid insurance.  Doctors with Medicaid patients had until Thursday, March 1 to submit documentation to a new payment system, called CHAMPS, for short.

But Erica Quealy of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says there's a big backlog right now.

"It can take 3-4 weeks for us to completely process their enrollment," she says of the backlog.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, joined local officials today in Ypsilanti to talk about President Trump's suggested cuts to Medicaid. Trump's proposed budget would eliminate nearly $700 billion from the federal program. Dingell spoke in front of community members and constituents at Community Alliance, an organization that serves developmentally disabled adults in Ypsilanti.

State lawmakers are considering a new way to help underserved populations get dental care.

A bill that passed the Senate 21-15 on Wednesday would authorize and license a new kind of mid-level dental professional called a "dental therapist."  

The legislation sets out educational and training requirements that would have to be met before dental therapists could perform basic dental care, like fillings and simple teeth extractions, that are currently handled by dentists.  

A national crackdown on health care fraud has landed dozens of people in Michigan in trouble with the law.

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force, jointly run by the U.S. Justice and the Health and Human Services departments, has charged more than 400 defendants nationwide of fraud amounting to more than a billion dollars.

In Michigan, 32 people face charges, including fraud, kickbacks, money laundering and drug diversion schemes involving approximately $218 million in false claims for services that were medically unnecessary or never rendered.

President Trump’s proposed budget could mean trouble for southeast Michigan.

That’s the opinion of Congressman Sander Levin and more than 20 organizations in the area.

The congressman met with representatives from different organizations at risk of losing federal funding if the president’s budget is approved.

Levin says the proposed budget has very few positives, if any, for Michigan residents.

“I don’t want people to go hungry because of these cuts, I don’t want them to be in the cold without assistance for heat,” Levin said.

New data from a nonpartisan think tank says Michigan would hit a financial stumbling block if the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act passes.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the new health care bill would cost Michigan more than $582 million to maintain expansion in the next four years, and more than $1 billion by 2023. 

State officials and health care providers called on Washington lawmakers to keep the state’s Medicaid expansion Monday.

From doctors to the state budget director, the message is clear. Let the state keep its Healthy Michigan Medicaid expansion. In order to do that, the federal government needs to keep paying for it.

But right now lawmakers in Washington are churning out plans that don’t seem to coincide with this goal.

Top officials in Gov. Rick Snyder's administration say it could cost Michigan up to $800 million a year to keep the state's Medicaid expansion program at current enrollment levels if cuts approved by the U.S. House are enacted.

State Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon gave the estimate Monday during an event in which Snyder aides and advocates defended the expanded Medicaid program.

We may soon see a draft proposal for how Michigan will handle more than two billion dollars in Medicaid funding earmarked for mental health.

The Snyder administration caused an uproar earlier this year when it backed a plan to further privatize the public nonprofit mental health system by turning over $2.4 billion in state funding to Medicaid HMOs.

Mental Health groups said this would put control of the money into the hands of out-of-state, for-profit insurance companies.

Governor Rick Snyder faces a decision soon on whether to sign or veto a bill he doesn’t like. It deals with how the state raises money for the Medicaid program. A plan adopted by the Legislature scraps a tax on health insurance claims. The bill would replace it with a complicated new funding system.

Snyder administration officials say the federal government would probably reject it, and deny the state many millions of Medicaid dollars. But legislative leaders want to push the issue.

Some Flint residents may be eligible for more healthcare benefits than they thought.

According to the "Care for Flint" campaign, the expansion of Medicaid has changed the income requirements for some services. 

"Care for Flint" is a collaboration of non-profits, churches, and grassroots organizations trying to find solutions to the ongoing water crisis.

Jamie Gaskin is the CEO of United Way of Genesee County and he says helping people understand their healthcare options is the goal of the campaign.