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Janet Firshein or Joe Sutherland at 301/652-1558

FOR RELEASE WITH A.M. PAPERS ON

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

 NATIONAL REPORT EXAMINES ALASKA’S

STATE-PROVIDED HEALTH CARE

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) –  An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, finds that Alaska had one of the steepest increases in government-funded long-term care costs in FY2002, with a 27.1 percent rise in spending. Despite that precipitous rise, it one of the more successful states at spending long-term care dollars for care at home or in the community, as opposed to in nursing homes.

 

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

 

Among the report’s other findings about Alaska:

 

  • Alaska has a high rate of uninsured adults under the age of 65, with 22.2 percent uninsured. That puts Alaska behind all but eight other states in this indicator.
  • It was one of the only states that actually tightened eligibility levels for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program last year--from 200 percent of the poverty level to 175 percent. “This was obviously a function of tight budget times,” says Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report. “And many states made cutbacks in the program, but used sneakier approaches. In some ways, its better to be upfront about your cuts, as Alaska was, rather than cutting outreach and putting up barriers to enrollment as so many other states have done.”

 

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.” 

 

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29.  Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

 

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