Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has made cuts to his state's budget more than five times since Sept. 2009, including a $1.6 million cut to the state's Medicaid budget during fiscal year 2010, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
According to the report, education, mental health and other areas have been cut by almost 10 percent, and cuts are proposed to continue in 2011 and 2012. His budget cuts have come under attack from mental health professionals, who are strongly critical of the governor and feel the cuts are starving the state of necessary resources.
The governor is pushing to close four mental health centers and six crisis centers, cuts he expects to save the state $28 million over two years. He also reinstated a hospital tax used to fund Medicaid in 2009, which had been previously blocked by the federal government in 2005 over concerns it wasn't being assessed properly, according to the report.
Read the Wall Street Journal report on Mississippi funding cuts.
Read more on hospital business and finance:
-AMGA Offers Feedback to NCQA's 2011 ACO Criteria
-8 Hospitals and Health Systems Recently Announcing ACOs
According to the report, education, mental health and other areas have been cut by almost 10 percent, and cuts are proposed to continue in 2011 and 2012. His budget cuts have come under attack from mental health professionals, who are strongly critical of the governor and feel the cuts are starving the state of necessary resources.
The governor is pushing to close four mental health centers and six crisis centers, cuts he expects to save the state $28 million over two years. He also reinstated a hospital tax used to fund Medicaid in 2009, which had been previously blocked by the federal government in 2005 over concerns it wasn't being assessed properly, according to the report.
Read the Wall Street Journal report on Mississippi funding cuts.
Read more on hospital business and finance:
-AMGA Offers Feedback to NCQA's 2011 ACO Criteria
-8 Hospitals and Health Systems Recently Announcing ACOs