Ten hospitals sued the state of New Hampshire for providing insufficient payment for the treatment of Medicaid patients in U.S. District Court this past Monday, The Boston Globe reported. The hospitals claim that the state's inadequate reimbursement of hospital Medicare costs jeopardizes underprivileged patients' access to health care and violates the federal Medicaid Act. The hospitals said that the state did not take into consideration the amount of funding needed to pay for the state-federal health care program for the poor, but rather made the cuts based on budgetary concerns. In the past, the state matched hospitals' Medicaid expenditures while taking in $1.8 billion in federal funds. The federal government stopped this practice, causing hospitals to allocate state Medicaid funding on a per patient basis. These cuts will cause hospitals to reduce the number of services offered under Medicaid or terminate the Medicaid contracts with the state altogether, according to The Globe. Professionals at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center estimate that it will be assigned $40 million in state taxes this year, and therefore plans to shut down its neonatal intensive care and helicopter rescue operations.
The political science job market experienced growth this year following two years of decline, Inside Higher Ed reported. A study published by the American Political Science Association's institutional program director Jennifer Segal Diascro showed that the total number of open positions listed with APSA increased by 11 percent, and the number of assistant professor positions increased by 15 percent from 2010-2011. Of the total number of political science graduate students, 49 percent obtained permanent academic positions, 24 percent took temporary positions, 19 percent accepted post-doctrate positions and 9 percent took non-academic political science jobs. The largest number of hires were in the field of comparative politics, however the highest percent hired were in the fields of public law, methods and American politics.
A pilot program for students receiving Pell Grants known as "Aid Like a Paycheck" aims to encourage students to complete their undergraduate degrees by using surplus Pell Grant funds to provide students with a biweekly paycheck, Inside Higher Ed reported. Grants can amount to up to $5,550, more than is often required to cover tuition fees and supply costs at many community colleges. The experimental project, run by the policy research organization Institute for College Access and Success and Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, recently finished its first year at Mt. San Antonio College with promising results. The group of 140 students invited to participate in the program provided positive feedback, and many said they are now more motivated to study and reduce the number of hours they devote to other jobs.
