Critics say new Medicare rate-setting board has too much power; former budget chief says new system requires it

Critics as diverse as Republican state representative. Addia Wuchner and earlier countrywide Democratic chairman and Vermont controller Howard Dean, a doctor, are criticizing the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel fashioned by the federal health-care reform law to clutch down health-care overheads. But a finance executive who helped create the board says the critics are inedible pedestal.

Federal report

Added than two dozen Kentucky communities still allow hospitals as of the critical-access sickbay train, in which small, isolated hospital's progress elevated Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements in return in support of limiting their size and services. Now federal officials appear to be making an allowance for a move so as to possibly will cost the hospitals money and perhaps deposit them by the side of the hazard of ultimate.

Most of the hospitals would not unite current location supplies if necessary to re-enroll to progress reimbursements from Medicare, and the Centers in support of Medicare and Medicaid Services possibly will realize considerable savings by revoking certification to a little of these hospitals and reimbursing them by the side of let down tariff calibrate by prospective payment systems and fee schedules more willingly than by the side of 101 percent of overheads, according to a shot by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ashland hospital lays off another 4 percent

King's Daughters Medical Center in Ashland is laying inedible any more 4 percent of its payroll and ultimate satellite centers in Pikeville and Russell, citing let down facts of patients and cut-rate federal and state reimbursements.

Kentucky poverty rate is fifth highest in U.S., but a larger share of Kentuckians had health insurance in 2012 than in 2011

In 2012, as U.S. incomes remained lower and poverty rates higher than in 2007, the year before the recession, Kentucky poverty rates increased and one in four Kentucky children were living in poverty, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. However, the percentage of Kentuckians with health insurance increased.

Kentucky had the fifth highest percentage of residents living in poverty (19.4 percent) in 2012, up from 18.8 percent in 2011. It ranked behind Mississippi (24.2 percent), New Mexico (20.8), Louisiana (19.9) and Arkansas (19.8). However, it was statistically tied with the last two states for third place because the error margin for the estimates is plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. Nationally, 2012 was the second straight year that the U.S. poverty rate had failed to improve. It remained at 15 percent, with 46.5 million people earning at or below the federal poverty line. Click here for an interactive poverty rate map from Stateline.