Month: May 2011

A group of Wisconsinites with disabilities vowed Wednesday to keep protesting the Ryan budget after many of them were arrested this week demonstrating in congressional office buildings. Holzbauer was arrested Monday with 90 others from Wisconsin and other states while protesting Ryan's proposal to convert the Medicaid entitlement into block grants to the states. The group had occupied the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 5/5)

The Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, challenging the state's plan to end a program that provided $3.4 million in grants for family planning to clinics, cities and counties. The association, which doesn't include Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, contends that the proposal violates the federal government's requirements for the state to continue receiving a $10.7 million block grant for maternal and child health programs. But Seth Boffeli, a spokesman for the Department of Health Services, said the state is in no danger of losing the federal block grant. (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 5/4)

Even as health secretary Dennis Smith is finishing up a round of town hall meetings across the state that he claims will help him come up with ideas for where to cut $500 million from the state's Medicaid programs over the next two years, it looks like the feds are taking one option off the table. The Obama administration this week is proposing a new rule that would make it much more difficult for states like Wisconsin to cut Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals, and Smith is not pleased. In an interview with the New York Times, Smith described the proposal as "a federal power grab." (NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4)

To the dismay of the American Hospital Association, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released an exhaustive list of medical errors occurring at the nation's 4,700 hospitals. CMS used Medicare fee-for-service claims from October 2008 through June 2010, based on the rates of eight different "never events," or medical errors, of which each is compared with the national rate for the event in question. (MILWAUKEE BUSINESS JOURNAL, 5/3)

Depending on which Wisconsinite you ask, Rep. Paul Ryan should either use his budget to pave a road to the White House or throw it into Lake Michigan. The Budget Committee chairman held 19 “listening sessions” in his southeastern Wisconsin district over the recess, and his constituents didn’t disappoint: they gave him an earful. A vocal minority of protesters — some of them following him from venue to venue — kept Ryan’s controversial plan to overhaul Medicare at the forefront of the eight town halls POLITICO attended. But he was also greeted with standing ovations and calls to run for president. (POLITICO, 5/3)

A Madison company with a unique infection-fighting technology has raised $1 million. Zurex Pharma Inc. raised the money from the Peak Ridge AgTech Fund, which is managed by Peak Ridge Capital, a Boston-based venture capital fund with offices in Madison. Zurex' technology has "tremendous potential" to prevent infections acquired in health care settings in humans and dairy mastitis in cows, said Jason Smith, a general partner in the AgTech Fund. (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 5/3)