Stories

“I don’t think this is enough. It’s too small a step and more needs to be done,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, about a Democratic jobs bill.

AMES — Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats pointed to national education policy and the debate surrounding health care reform as signs that states, including Iowa, need to recognize the need to re-establish their sovereignty over the federal government.

Health care advocates warn that a measure to limit access to psychiatric drugs that has been included in government reorganization legislation could create “two different standards of care” for Iowans battling mental illness — one for haves and another for have nots.

Senate Democratic leaders won quick praise from seniors this week when they vowed to close the nettlesome coverage gap in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, but left unmentioned was a looming battle.

Mercy Medical Center in Sioux City has agreed to pay the federal government $400,000 to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by inflating charges for heart patients’ care.

A Cedar Rapids chiropractor will be spending the next seven years behind bars for using the stolen identities of minors in a scheme to bilk Medicaid.
Douglas P. Dvorak, 46, received the prison term Thursday after an April jury verdict found him guilty of 22 counts of mail fraud, 11 counts of aggravated identity theft and [...]

The Senate finance panel just shot down an amendment to the committee’s health reform bill that would have required beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to show a photo ID in order to enroll. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the senior Republican on the Finance Committee and sponsor of the proposal, said the [...]

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Chris Rants weighed in Thursday on the idea of reforming the nation’s health care system, saying Iowa cannot afford the added cost of providing insurance to more Americans.
Rants, a state legislator from Sioux City, said a Senate health care plan would add 335,879 adults on Medicaid, which, if the state was forced [...]

The Iowa Dept. of Human Services is expected to gain an extra $115 million more come July 1st, thanks to the passage of the cigarette tax this past March in the legislature as well as the creation of a Health Care Trust Fund.

The cigarette tax legislation created the standing appropriation to the Dept. of Health [...]