Category: Plain Dealer

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Dialysis crisis followed shift by Medicaid

By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter | February 12, 2007

 For the past year, a dialysis machine has been keeping Karletta Edwards’ mother alive, substituting for her kidneys to cleanse her blood three times a week.

But in January, shortly after Ohio’s Medicaid program transferred her, along with more than 25,000 other low-income people in Northeast Ohio, into an HMO, something went wrong.

The state’s contracts with insurance companies are expected to save Medicaid $24 million this year, by the time some 125,000 blind, disabled or older people are placed in privately run managed care plans.

Even though the companies are paid 6.6 percent less, Medicaid’s average cost to care for the same population, state officials say the health coverage will remain the same…. Four weeks ago, Edwards received a desperate call from her mother. The transportation service that picked up Emma Hansen from her East Cleveland  home and brought her to the dialysis center didn’t show up. [Continued here]

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Consumer guide to prescription drug plans in Northeast Ohio
Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Aging Issues Reporter | November 11, 2006

Health insurance companies with contracts from Medicare have been approved to sell a total of 93 plans in Ohio. Some policies cover only drugs, while others include health insurance. This special section provides a consumer guide including the plan basics, some questions to ask before choosing a plan, a translation of the technical jargon companies use, and where to go for assistance.[four-page section here]

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Advocates for Medicaid seniors wary of assigned drug coverage

By Susan Jaffe  |  Plain Dealer Reporter | December 29, 2005

Under the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the federal government enrolled millions of the nation’s poorest and sickest seniors into private drug plans that may not cover all their drugs. [Continued here.]

Medicare drug plan backfires on states

Seniors’ switch from Medicaid will boost costs by millions 

By Susan Jaffe  |  Plain Dealer Reporter | March 9, 2005

The Medicare prescription drug benefit is backfiring on states–running up millions of dollars in extra drug bills instead of the savings promised by its Republican supporters. [Continued here ]…

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Switch to Medicare to cost state millions

By Susan Jaffe  |  Plain Dealer Reporter  |  October 20, 2005

Ohio’s financially strapped Medicaid program will pay millions more when low-income seniors switch to Medicare for their prescription drugs next year.  The federal law that established the new Medicare drug benefit requires the nearly 200,000 seniors in Medicaid – the state health-care program for low-income people – to transfer to Medicare for drug coverage. The law also says that states must reimburse the federal government for 90 percent of those seniors’ drug costs. But any savings that states expected have vanished because of the controversial formula Medicare used to figure how much they owe. The switch will cost Ohio $35 million more in 2007 than if the seniors now in Medicaid had stayed there. [Continued here.]

 

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Medicare dangles Rx carrot
By Susan Jaffe | Plain Dealer Reporter  | February 12, 2005    

Many of the nation’s major corporations providing retiree drug coverage will get help paying the bill  – subsidies worth several billion dollars a year from federal taxpayers. The money totals roughly $71 billion tax-free through 2013 and is part of the Medicare Modernization Act, which added a drug benefit to Medicare.  It is aimed at encouraging employers to maintain their coverage instead of forcing retirees onto Medicare’s tab. [Continued here]

You Can Go Home Again: A move to a nursing home needn’t be forever anymore.

A new Ohio program not only supports independent living, but also saves the state money.

By Susan Jaffe  |  Plain Dealer Reporter | November 7,  2004

Without Ohio’s Access Success Project,   Larry Fry might  have lived in a nursing home for the rest of his life.  The program is unwinding the government rules and red tape that trap people in nursing homes who don’t want to be there, don’t need to be there and certainly don’t need to be driving up the state’s enormous nursing home costs (See Graphic, “Paying More for Less,” pg. 19). If it succeeds, the effort targeting 250 nursing home residents could save Ohio millions of dollars a year. Nursing home care costs an average of about $56,000 per resident a year in Ohio. Because Fry needs so little care, living on his own will save Medicaid roughly $50,000 a year.  Continued in The Plain Dealer’s Sunday Magazine…