Medicaid and Devolution: A View from the States
How much responsibility for providing health care to the poor should be devolved from the federal government to the states? Any answer to this critical policy question requires a careful assessment of the Medicaid program. Drawing on the insights of leading scholars and top state health care officials, this volume analyzes the policy and management implications of various options for Medicaid devolution.
Proponents of devolution typically express confidence that states can meet the challenges it will pose for them. But, as this book shows, the degree to which states have the capacity and commitment to use enhanced discretion to sustain or improve health care for the poor remains an open question. Their failure to attend to issues of politics, implementation, and management could lead to disappointment. Chapters focus on such topics as Medicaid financing, benefits and beneficiaries, long-term care, managed care, safety net providers, and the appropriate division of labor between the federal government and the states.
List Price: $ 19.95
Price: $ 18.66
Protect Your Estate: Definitive Strategies for Estate and Wealth Planning from the Leading Experts
Estate planning is more important than ever, and it’s no longer just for the very rich.
Today’s “middle-class millionaires”created by the booming stock and real estate marketshave more assets than they ever believed possible. That unexpected wealth brings with it new concerns about how to protect their money and their heirs. A best-seller in its first edition, this book shows anyone how to implement estate planning into a long-range financial plan. It includes the latest on:
- Disability planning
- Living trusts; asset protection through long-term planning
- Family limited partnerships
Written by two noted tax attorneys who have revolutionized the estate-planning process with their techniques, Protect Your Estate, Second Edition, enables readers to understand the newest changes in the tax laws and turn them to their own advantage.
List Price: $ 22.95
Price: $ 11.93
New Times, New Challenges: Law and Advice for Savvy Seniors and Their Families
If your parents are growing older, if you are growing older (or at least you hope to), you will face new times and new challenges. This book will help. A law professor and a leading elder law lawyer team up to offer legal and practical advice on retirement issues (finances, housing, health care), walk you through various estate planning options (living trusts, wills, advance directives), and help your family in truly sad times, disability and death in the family. They also help you avoid, and, if that’s too late, deal with bad folks: caretakers who abuse elders, obnoxious bill collectors, scam artists, identity thieves, and those discriminate on the basis of age or disability. Alas, there are even legal problems associated with grandparenting and remarriage (the triumph of hope over experience).
As to driving and sex, while there is both good and bad news, one message stands out: never at the same time.
The topics may be sobering, but the style is not. It’s a good read, often funny and even, on occasion, profound. Charles Sabatino, the director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging, writes that the book is ”an encyclopedic legal reference with the down-home philosophy and wit of Will Rogers, wryly enriched by poetry, humor, and existential musings.” Doctor Andrew Weil finds the book ”entertaining and uplifting with very practical and sensible suggestions.” He will use it himself and will recommend it to patients, friends, and loved ones.
Whether you buy this book or not, the time is now to face the new challenges that are hurrying near. How? Sit down for an hour and write a letter to your family, covering such things as end-of-life care, living arrangements in the case of disability, and who gets the grandfather clock. (There is a suggested model in the book.) Discuss your letter with loved ones. You will save you and your family, money, confusion, and heartbreak. Challenges, unaddressed, fester.
Professor Hegland has spent his career teaching law, mostly at Arizona but also UCLA and Harvard. He has degrees from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Harvard. Author of several legal books, he is known for his wit and clarity. Robert Fleming has spent his career practicing elder law. He lectures nationally and authors a legal treatise used by many of the nation’s elder law lawyers.
They know their stuff. And now you can too.
List Price: $ 27.00
Price: $ 24.94
Reform Medicaid First: Laying the Foundation for National Health Care Reform
As Congress contemplates major revisions to America’s health care system, two leading health economists warn that significant differences among state Medicaid programs will hinder national health care reform. Thomas W. Grannemann and Mark V. Pauly argue that Medicaid will need to be reformed as an early step in any serious health care reform effort. While states such as Mississippi and Nevada spend as little as ,000 per poor person annually, New York and Alaska annually spend more than ,000 per Medicaid patient. Large differences remain even after correcting for cost-of-living and medical-price differences. This imbalance among states creates an uneven and unstable foundation for any national program to address the needs of uninsured Americans. The authors offer principles for reform designed to encourage equity, efficiency, and accountability in all publicly funded health care programs. They suggest changes in provider payment methods and federal/state financing designed to promote interstate equity, equality of payment across settings, claims-based accountability, provider network control, and value-based cost containment. Such reform will require upfront changes in Medicaid to improve access to high-value health care for low-income persons (particularly those in low-Medicaid-benefit states) and to help slow the rate of growth in medical costs. These changes will level the playing field for state programs and provide a crucial foundation for further national reform.
List Price: $ 15.00
Price: $ 8.63