skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Report says a second Trump term would add 4 billion tons of climate pollution; Trump predicts a bloodbath for the country if he is defeated in November's election; Nevada leaders discuss future of IVF, abortion in the Silver State; and anglers seek trawler buffer zone as Atlantic herring stock declines.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Foster Groups Alarmed by WV Switch to Private Health Care

play audio
Play

Friday, November 15, 2019   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Foster parents and child-welfare groups are worried about the switch from state-managed health care to private care for children in the state's care.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources announced last week that it has chosen Aetna Better Health as the new managed-care provider for kids in foster and adoptive care. But Marissa Sanders – who is the director of West Virginia Foster, Adoptive and Kinship Parents Network – says the move could make it harder for an already under-served population to receive services.

She says the biggest worry is whether foster families will be able to keep their doctors.

"My son's adopted and I can take him pretty much anywhere in the state and know that his services will be covered,” says Sanders. “There's concern that that may not be the case anymore. There's a lot of concern about what happens if a child has significant, complex needs and a long history with a particular provider, and that provider is not in-network."

The new provider, Aetna Better Health of West Virginia, says it has over 11,000 providers in-network, including more than 1,300 primary care doctors and all rural health clinics in the state. The state said it made the switch to better coordinate the large number of children in its care.

But the idea of spending money on a for-profit business is another concern, when Sanders says that money could be better spent supporting foster kids.

Josh Boynton, with Aetna Better Health, says his company is sensitive to the challenges in West Virginia's overwhelmed foster-care system – and wants to have a collaborative relationship with the foster community.

"We'll partner with families, we'll partner with the state, with providers and advocates and community leaders, to make sure that our approach builds on what West Virginia families should expect and rightly deserve," says Boynton.

A spokesperson for the West Virginia DHHR says the agency is in the process of implementing the new health-care system, and will be phasing it in starting in the first quarter of 2020.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
Corporate partners sign contracts to offer a graduate assistantship and pay the students. In turn, MSU pays the graduate assistant's tuition, fees and salary, so the assistantship is directly tied to the academic experience. (pressmaster/Adobe Stock)

play sound

By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Missouri News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Col…


Social Issues

play sound

A new report brands Connecticut's tax system as "regressive" for low- to middle-income residents and uses a report from the state to make its point…

Environment

play sound

Backers of a new federal rule said it will increase fairness for livestock and poultry producers, in North Carolina and across the country. The U.S…


A study by the advocacy group Inseparable showed one in five adults said at any given time, they consider their mental health to be either 'fair' or 'poor.' (Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Mental health care advocates are encouraging federal agencies to adopt a proposed update to regulations which would expand access to psychological car…

Social Issues

play sound

With hotter summers bringing hotter working conditions, the Maryland Department of Labor is implementing a heat stress standard to protect workers …

Social Issues

play sound

By Jimmy Cloutier for OpenSecrets.Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the OpenSecrets-Public News Service Collaboratio…

Environment

play sound

Recreational fishermen in New England say commercial trawlers are threatening the survival of smaller businesses relying on a healthy stock of Atlanti…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021