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Smart Laws Alleviate
County Health Care Costs |
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Advocate for
Counties Fights for Funding Reforms |
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Ronald Wiborg says he’s reached the age where he
could simply retire. Not a chance. He’s too busy
fighting for reforms in correctional health care
funding at the county, state and federal levels.
He’s just the man for the job. For 20 years, Wiborg
has been the contracts and grants manager for the
Hennepin County (MN) Department of Community
Corrections, gaining firsthand knowledge of jail
economics. He’s a member of the National Association
of Counties, serving on the Large Urban County
Caucus steering committee and working on criminal
justice and local correctional health care issues.
(He also represents NACo on the NCCHC board of
directors). And he’s a savvy and effective lobbyist.
Some of the legislative projects that Wiborg and his
collaborators have undertaken have helped jails
throughout Minnesota and could easily be replicated
elsewhere. Others, particularly the work to change
the HHS rule, would bring about radical change.
— Jaime Shimkus |
Minnesota Statutes for Payment of Medical
Services in County Correctional Facilities
Suspension,
not Termination of Medical Assistance Eligibility
M.S. 256B.055, subd. 14: An individual who is enrolled in
medical assistance who is charged with a crime and incarcerated
for less than 12 months shall be suspended from eligibility at
the time of incarceration until the individual is released. Upon
release, medical assistance eligibility is reinstated without
reapplication using a reinstatement process and form, if the
individual is otherwise eligible.
Continue
General Assistance Medical Care While Incarcerated in County
Jails
M.S. 256D.03, subd. (3)(j): General assistance medical care is
not available for a person in a correctional facility unless the
person is detained by law for less than one year in a county
correctional or detention facility as a person accused or
convicted of a crime, or admitted as an inpatient to a hospital
on a criminal hold order, and the person is a recipient of
general assistance medical care at the time the person is
detained by law or admitted on a criminal hold order and as long
as the person continues to meet the other eligibility
requirements of this subdivision.
Collect from
Insurance Companies
M.S. 641.15, subd. 2: If a prisoner is covered by health or
medical insurance or other health plan when medical services are
provided, the county providing the medical services has a right
of subrogation to be reimbursed by the insurance carrier for all
sums spent by it for medical services to the prisoner that are
covered by the policy of insurance or health plan, in accordance
with the benefits, limitations, exclusions, provider
restrictions, and other provisions of the policy or health plan.
The county may maintain an action to enforce this subrogation
right.
[This article first appeared in the
Fall 2007 issue of CorrectCare.]
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