Medicaid | featured news

The expansion of Medicaid in the health care law, if it is upheld, would greatly increase the number of people served — and add to the program’s costs.

Many states have expanded eligibility for, and simplified access to, the children's Medicaid program. This has helped shrink the number of uninsured children from 6.9 million in 2008 to 5.9 million in 2010. Experts say the Affordable Care Act, the federal health care overhaul that requires states to maintain income eligibility levels and discourages other barriers to coverage, has played a key role in the improvement.

A key player in implementing President Obama's health care law is stepping down in the face of Republican opposition. Don Berwick, the head of Medicare and Medicaid, was a recess appointment made by Obama after Senate Republicans had vowed to vote down his nomination.

Raymond Johnson was due for some good news. Earlier this month, he was denied Medicaid coverage after being diagnosed with breast cancer. But he just got the call he was waiting for: South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services is granting him coverage, after all.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller says his family benefited from Medicaid and a state-run health care program for low-income children and pregnant women.Miller previously acknowledged receiving federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas in the 1990s, as well as low-income hunting and fishing licenses for him and his wife in Alaska.As a conservative candidate, he's criticized certain entitlement programs. Sitting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's running for re-election as a write-in candidate against him, called Miller a hypocrite.

The House approves the measure on a largely party-line vote and President Obama swiftly signs it. It will save 161,000 teachers' jobs and sustain Medicaid funding.

Congress on Tuesday gave final approval to a $26.1-billion aid package for cash-strapped states that will keep 161,000 teachers and thousands of police, fire and other local government workers from being laid off.

President Obama will use a “recess appointment” to name Dr. Donald M. Berwick to run Medicare and Medicaid.

Same-sex partners must get the same privileges granted heterosexual couples in hospitals that get Medicare or Medicaid funds, he says in a memo.

President Obama late Thursday ordered most hospitals in the country to grant the same visitation rights to gay and lesbian partners that they do to married heterosexual couples.

President Barack Obama on Saturday proposed an additional $313 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs to pay for healthcare reforms expected to cost about $1 trillion over the next decade.