Managed Care Plans' Neglect of Health Care for Medicaid Patients
A Big Problem in the Cost and Quality of Health Care
Nationally and Here in Minnesota
Medicaid has grown to represent 30% of the typical state budget and is crowding out education, transportation and other needs.
Two thirds of states have outsourced their Medicaid programs to managed care plans rather than have Medicare directly pay doctors and hospitals.
The private plan providers then often refuse to provide the data that would determine whether our tax dollars are being well-used because they regard the data as proprietary information.
Following is an article that gives an example from California. It is an example that applies to patients nationally and has also been experienced by patients in some states who have Medicare Advantage Plans where an insurance company is paid a fixed amount by Medicare for the patient, and then the insurance company is responsible for covering all of the patient's costs
"As Billions In Tax Dollars Flow To Private Medicaid Plans, Who’s Minding The Store?"
By Chad Terhune, Photos by Heidi de Marco October 18, 2018
Climate Change and Corporate Accountability after Hurricane Florence
Hogwash and its Aftermath
"North Carolina is home to the second-largest concentration of pig-raising facilities in the United States (behind only Iowa). The state has more than 2,200 pork CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) holding more than nine million pigs and more than 3,900 poultry operations. More than 90 percent of that state’s pork production is controlled by just one company: Smithfield. Smithfield’s parent company, the Chinese WH Group, is the largest pork processor in the world and worth $15 billion."
Just prior to Hurricane Florence, manure was overapplied in fields, releasing climate warming nitrous oxide gas into the air. The harm done was not limited to emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs), but the manure was then washed into floodwaters that spread it over a vast terrain. Read the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) article based on research completed last summer by GRAIN and IATP.
Note that MN is also a leading industrial farming state with accompanying huge greenhouse gas emissions, and widespread lake, river, and acquifer pollution, especially in the southern and western areas of the state. The high level of air pollution causes increased health care problems, especially respiratory illness, for people living within two miles of a factory farm.
Share Your Ideas for Biking and Walking to LRT Stations
Hennepin County Transit leaders would like the suggestions of Brooklyn Park residents who bike or walk near the areas where the Bottineau Extention of the Blue Line Light Rail will stop. Attendees who attended the March Think Again Brooklyns forum shared their suggestions for biking and walking routes to LRT Stations and you can too. If you are a biker or walker near any of the future LRT stops, you are likely to have insight into how access to a station can be improved for bikers or walkers.
Before you begin, let me ask you, have you ever seen a bike path along a busy street that rarely has a biker?
Let me give you an example. When we go to doctors' appointments in Abbott Northwestern Hospital or the Phillips Eye Clinic, we park on Portland or Park Avenues. I'm usually careful to check if there is a bicyclist coming along the bike path right next to the parked cars, but I have never seen a bicyclist on either of the avenues. Why is that? Jay Wallsjasper, who has bicycled in cities across the U.S. has answered that in an excellent short article.
Bike Breakthrough
Connecting neighborhoods with low-stress routes
Jay Walljasper, November 9, 2017
Jay emphasizes that bike routes need to be safe, and if they aren’t, people won’t use them. Most bikers know that they might not fare so well if someone knocks them over by opening their car door on their right when traffic is going by to their left. Jay includes photos that show how the bike lane should be separated from traffic by a barrier and gives suggestions for making intersections safer for bikers. Read his short article that will give you insight and inspiration for your suggestions and will remind you of the joys of biking around town.
In June 2012, Think Again MN launched a history series that examines politics and policy-making in Minnesota during the last century from the immediate post World War II years up through the 1990s. That era witnessed fierce legislative battles at the State Capitol but it was also a time of shared values that cut across partisan lines.
MN's Leading Election System
MN's Leading Election System
With Secretary of State Steve Simon
Listen to Secretary of State Steve Simon's excellent presentation on MN's outstanding election system emulated by many other states at the Think Again Brooklyns forum January 19, 2016. Secretary Simon includes ways in which it can be improved, and he explains why it is important to vote. He concludes with a quote from a tee shirt: "Failure to vote is not an act of rebellion. It is an act of surrender."
Get details on how to vote at http://mnvotes.org
Oregon's Automatic Voter Registration
How Oregon Became the Easiest Place to Vote in the US
By Lornet Turnbull
YES! Magazine
October 8, 2016
In January, Oregon became the first state in the country to begin automatically registering eligible citizens to vote when they obtain or renew their driver's licenses or state IDs, completely shifting the burden of voter registration from the individual to the government.