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Hartford doula training targets gaps in care for Spanish speakers
Mariana Navarrete Villegas and Katy Golvala, The Connecticut Mirror, Sept. 24
The Hispanic Health Council is training community doulas, who will be able to educate, inform, and guide people who are or will get pregnant. The training, conducted in Spanish, aims to address a major maternal health gap in a city where over half of residents who give birth are Hispanic. “The doulas coming out of this program can be the ones advocating for the Spanish-speaking pregnant women, connecting them with resources and in the hospital. Imagine waiting nine months to give birth and you end up being ignored, and not being told things because, ‘Oh, she won’t understand,’” said participant Zaza Robles, who worked as an obstetrician in her native Peru.
Loopholes in hospital charity care programs mean patients still get stuck with bills
Michelle Andrews, KFF Health News, Sept. 22
Hospital financial assistance programs are commonplace. Most offer varying amounts of financial help to uninsured and lower-income people. But even if people qualify for assistance, they may not get discounts. That’s because many physicians working at but not for a hospital aren’t bound by its financial assistance policies. Hospitals themselves might limit the types of services eligible for discounted or “charity care.” “It’s a hole in the system,” said Caitlin Donovan, a senior director at the Patient Advocate Foundation. In recent years, several states have passed medical debt protection laws.
Check-off box on CT tax form connects thousands with health-insurance: ‘Life-changing’ results
Ken Dixon, CT Insider, Sept. 22
By checking off a box on their state income tax form, tens of thousands of residents received information on insurance through Access Health CT and many signed up for coverage. State officials believe the assistance will be even more important next year due to uncertain federal health-care funding. In all, more than 64,000 tax filers checked the box. Of those, 6,000 people in nearly 1,900 households obtained coverage through Access Health CT. The addition to the tax form allowed the Department of Revenue Services to share information with the state’s insurance marketplace.
Trump’s Medicaid cuts could hamper efforts to house the homeless
Jason DeParle, The New York Times, Sept. 17
The deep cuts to Medicaid in the new federal domestic policy law will not just squeeze a program that pays doctors and hospitals to provide poor people health care. Over the last decade, states have increasingly used Medicaid dollars for another critical effort: helping homeless people and other vulnerable groups find stable housing. The future of that work is in doubt. While the new law does not prohibit housing aid, the squeeze on state budgets could make such optional services harder to sustain, and analysts say that new work rules that go into effect in 2027 may disenroll the homeless at high rates. About 30 states – including Connecticut – use Medicaid to support housing.