A helping hand for families living with chronic illness

The Los Angeles Times reports on three nonprofit websites that offer web pages to families with chronic illness, allowing them an easy and effective way to communicate with family and friends. Leading sites are Caringbridge.org, CarePages.com and theStatus.com. Families praise them for helping to promote a community of care around their loved ones.

Locked out.

Note to Medicaid patients: The doctor won't see you.

The Wall Street Journal reports on another way that people with disabilities are being sent to the back of the line. A growing number people with disabilities are losing access to health care or facing monumental delays as doctors across the country increasingly refuse to accept Medicaid patients, reports Vanessa Fuhrmans. Link here.

The story, which focuses on Michigan, raises the following points:
-- Straining under higher costs, Medicaid has been freezing or slashing fees to doctors. Doctors say Medicaid payments now do not even cover their costs.
-- A recent report from the non-profit Center for Studying Health System Change found that nearly half of doctors polled said they had stopped accepting or limited the number of new Medicaid patients.
-- Specialists are exiting the system at a higher rate than primary care physicians.
-- Delays in receiving treatment are leading to serious health consequences and costly emergency care, patients say.
-- The dwindling number of doctors who accept Medicaid patients undermines some presidential candidate proposals to broaden health-care coverage by expanding Medicaid eligibility.