Colorado braces for mental health cuts, Florida nursing homes brace for Medicare cuts, and other developments

Today's state coverage includes anxieties about Medicare cuts, tips from Massachusetts health officials and executives and a pro-migrant court ruling in Hawaii.

Kaiser Health News: "Three years after Massachusetts implemented a state program to provide near universal health care, officials said that a key to their success was that stakeholders from the state's health care sector and the business community had a commitment to implementing the program." Despite successes, one state official said cost containment remains a challenge (Marcy, 9/1).

Boston Globe: A new health program for migrants in Hawaii, scheduled to begin Tuesday, was postponed by a judge, who ruled that the program failed to live up to an obligation promised by the U.S. after nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Islands. The plan would not have covered dialysis and chemotherapy treatments for the migrants (Niesse, 9/1).

The Florida Times-Union: "Plans to cut Medicare spending to pay for a health care overhaul in America will cost Florida nursing homes nearly $3.5 billion over the next decade, a national nursing home group said Tuesday in Jacksonville" (Cox, 9/2).

Denver Post: Colorado's governor has proposed cutting funding for 79 beds at the Mental health Institute at Fort Logan. The cuts also include 126 jobs. Opponents painted their objection in moral terms at a two-hour forum Tuesday, but when it ended, "the bottom line remained: The state has to make cuts - which nobody wants - to balance a decimated budget" (Auge, 9/2).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.