I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Several states stand to benefit financially from the new federal health care reform legislation, according to a story today in the Christian Science Monitor. And New Mexico could be one of them.
The potential windfall is based on these states’ decision in recent years to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults. The federal government will assume more of that cost in coming years, meaning those states will pay less, according to the story.
Right now New Mexico covers childless adults up to 200 percent of federal poverty level, Carolyn Ingram, the state’s Medicaid director, told the Independent Friday morning.
Those individuals are covered under New Mexico’s State Coverage Insurance (SCI) program, which is funded through Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program.
Budgetary problems caused the state recently to stop accepting applications into the program, however, creating a waiting list populated with 13,000 individuals, according to the New Mexico Human Services Department.
“It’s two empty pockets in the same pair of pants,” Ingram said.
SCI, unlike the main Medicaid program, is not an entitlement program because the state received a federal waiver to start it a few years back. As a result, the federal government gave the state a lump sum to pay for the program instead of promising to pay a large share of all expenditures as happens in Medicaid generally.
When the new health care reform law takes effect, federal money will flow into the state to cover those on the SCI waiting list, Ingram said.
Those people, in turn, will use their benefits to get prescription drugs and schedule doctors visits, which could reap indirect financial benefits for the state, Ingram said.
“That will all return to the state in the form of gross receipts taxes and have a multiplier effect,” Ingram said.
