August 24, 2005

Medicaid Reform Commission To Survey Health Care Providers
The Missouri Medicaid Reform Commission has asked the staff of the Missouri General Assembly's Oversight Division to conduct a telephone survey of health care providers, including physicians, federally qualified health centers and provider-sponsored clinics. The commission, which is comprised of 10 state legislators and three state agency officials, wants to assess providers' views about the Medicaid program. The surveys are expected to take less than five minutes to complete.

Bush Submits Draft Legislation Of Medicaid Reform To Congress
On Aug. 5, President Bush's administration sent draft legislation concerning Medicaid spending to leaders of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The provisions are reported to be similar to those detailed in Bush's fiscal year 2006 budget request that reduces Medicaid spending.

In addition, the proposal would require states to submit their Medicaid spending plans in advance to federal officials. The Bush administration believes this would allow the federal government to curtail questionable accounting practices. Missouri currently complies with this provision. Under the Missouri Medicaid Partnership Plan, the state submits its proposed Medicaid spending plan to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to receive the state's federal reimbursement allowance.

The draft bill also includes a cap on administrative costs paid to the states by the federal government.

Study: Children's Immune Systems Not Overwhelmed By Vaccines
According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, childhood vaccines do not appear to overwhelm children's immune systems and make them prone to other infections. Researchers from Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, studied 805,206 children born in Denmark between 1990 and 2001 for their first five years of life to determine if any of six standard vaccines that children received increased their risk for seven other major infectious diseases.

The vaccines included influenza Type B, diphtheria-tetanus-inactivated poliovirus, diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis-inactivated poliovirus, whole-cell pertussis, measles-mumps-rubella and oral poliovirus. According to researchers, vaccinated children had no significantly increased risk of being hospitalized with viral and bacterial pneumonia, septicemia, meningitis diarrhea, upper respiratory infections and viral central nervous system infections.

More Employers Offer Health Plans; Fewer Workers Accept Coverage
According to a survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, the aggregate percentage of workers offered health benefits by their employers increased from 70 percent to 71.4 percent from 1997 through 2002. The percentage of workers covered by employer-sponsored health plans increased from 60 percent to 60.7 percent while the percentage of workers taking coverage when offered declined from 85.7 percent to 84.9 percent. Among the reasons given not to participate in their employer's health plan, 75.4 percent were covered by another health plan, 22 percent reported the plan was too costly and 3.1 percent did not need or want health insurance. The study is available online at www.ebri.org.

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