Oct 5 2013
The District of Columbia's payments to medical providers treating more than 200,000 poor people enrolled in Medicaid will stop until the federal shutdown ends, city officials said. In Virginia, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli called on Congress to reopen the federal government -- and then cut off funding for the health law.
The Washington Post: Shutdown Will Halt D.C. Medicaid Payments
The federal shutdown will mean another setback for a beleaguered group: D.C. medical providers, particularly those serving low-income residents. The federal government shutdown means payments related to publicly funded health programs will cease until further notice, city health care finance officials said Thursday. That includes payments made directly to health providers, as well as the massive "capitated" payments made to the managed-care organizations that handle most city Medicaid enrollees (DeBonis, 10/3).
The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: Shutdown To Stop D.C. Medicaid Payments
The District of Columbia's Medicaid program, which covers around 220,000 low-income and disabled city residents, said Thursday it is stopping paying health providers until the federal government shutdown is resolved. Many D.C. government services such as trash pick-up have continued to run because the city is drawing on a $144 million contingency fund to pay for them in the absence of being able to use its 2014 budget, hamstrung by the budget showdown (Radnofsky, 10/3).
The Associated Press/Washington Post: Cuccinelli Finally Urges Congress To Restart Government, Then Strangle Health Law Separately
After days of equivocation, Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli on Thursday called on Congress to reopen the federal government, then fight over whether to starve the new health care law of funding. Cuccinelli told reporters after a Thursday-morning event that shuttering the government is not the right way for opponents of the 2010 Affordable Care Act to gain leverage to defeat the law he wants to see repealed (10/3).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.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.
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