In case you missed it, there was some good news from Milwaukee on Friday – regarding that city’s teen birth rate. City health officials reported that the rate of births to teens ages 15 through 17 in Milwaukee dropped in 2011 for the fifth straight year, and it has declined 36% since 2006.The following chart, which is from the Journal...
BadgerCare is in a period of transition in southeast Wisconsin and it could be a very bumpy period. As is well known, United Healthcare, which now covers about 174,000 BadgerCare participants in SE Wisconsin, informed the Department of Health Services during the summer that it is going to end its contract with the state on Oct. 31....
State Policy Changes Result in Sharp Drop in Coverage BadgerCare enrollment fell by about 4,200 people in September, as the policy changes implemented in July continue to cause people to lose their BadgerCare coverage. In the first three months after those changes were initiated, BadgerCare enrollment has decreased by more than 16,000...
An unusually large group of more than 1,900 organizations representing a broad swath of American society united to urge members of Congress to pull back from the “fiscal cliff” in a responsible way that increases revenue and pares Pentagon spending in order to protect low-income people and rebuild the economy.In a two-page letter sent...
Plain Truths About Health Care Reform from Plain, Wisconsin“Losing health care coverage just before your due date is not something you read about in “What to Expect When Expecting.” Who would expect to lose their health insurance just when they needed it the most, but that is just what happened to a family from Plain, Wisconsin.”-JoAnn...
Wisconsin got some mixed news on jobs this week. The good news is that the newly released federal figures confirm the Walker Administration’s contention that there was net growth of more than 37,000 private sector jobs over the 12-month period from April 2011 through March of this year. The bad news is that those Bureau of Labor...
Many children and families in Wisconsin are still feeling the effects of the recession, and it may be some time before poverty rates fall to their pre-recession levels. That's the picture painted by new poverty and income figures for 2011 that were released by the Census Bureau in September. The new figures also show that significant...
What Has and Hasn’t Been Included in the DHS Calculations? As you have probably heard by now, the Department of Health Services (DHS) delivered some good news Friday relating to the budget for Medicaid (including BadgerCare and Family Care). In a September 28 letter to the Joint Finance Committee co-chairs, Secretary Smith said the...
Kudos to the Dept. of Health Services (DHS) for reminding me and others that that September is Infant Mortality Awareness Month. A DHS press release issued Monday highlights some of the Wisconsin trends and the racial disparities in infant mortality rates: Over the past two decades, overall infant mortality rate in Wisconsin declined...
Adult Coverage Has Fallen by 12,500 Since the BadgerCare Changes Took EffectTotal enrollment in BadgerCare fell by 9,244 in August, and is off by 11,900 since the start of the state fiscal year (on July 1). Looking more closely at the latest data, enrollment of children actually grew by more than 600 during July and August. The number...
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