ACCESS

Birth Control

A new law in New Jersey (SB 1195) prohibits pharmacists from refusing to fill a prescription solely because doing so would contravene the pharmacist’s philosophical, moral or religious beliefs. Pharmacists who do not have the drugs in stock are required to help a patient find a pharmacy that does. Backers say the law will protect patients’ rights by ensuring that women have access to birth-control methods and emergency contraception. “Discussions of morals and matters of conscience are admirable, but should not come into play when subjective beliefs conflict with objective medical decisions,” said Senator Joseph Vitale. “This bill sends a chilling message to individuals with religious or philosophical beliefs, that if they are pharmacists they need not apply in the state of New Jersey,” Marie Tasy of New Jersey Right to Life told the Associated Press. To learn more about state laws regarding pharmacist conscience clauses, please visit the NCSL website at http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/conscienceclauses.htm.

Wal-Mart Expands Health Coverage

The nation’s largest retail chain is expanding the choices offered its employees for health coverage and, as a result, is insuring more workers, the New York Times reports. Wal-Mart insures 100,000 more employees than it did three years ago, thanks in large part to a greater choice of plans and increased eligibility for part-time workers. Now 11 percent of part-time employees have coverage, more than double the number in 2003, and just over 60 percent of full-time employees are covered. Wal-Mart has come under fire in recent years for failing to provide coverage to all its workers, with the result that some end up in Medicaid. Some states have considered or enacted legislation that has targeted the company, including a 2006 Maryland law that would have required the company to provide insurance to its employees in the state. The law was eventually overturned in court. However, some are now looking to Wal-Mart’s effectiveness at cost-containment as a possible model for the health industry, pointing to innovations such as their $4 generic prescription drug program. “If you really turned Wal-Mart loose and had Wal-Mart against the health-care providers, it would be a fair fight,” Len Nichols of the New America Foundation told the Times.

MEDICAID

Medicaid Tax Cheats

A new report from the Government Accountability Office has found that Medicaid providers in seven states failed to pay federal taxes to the tune of $1 billion in 2006, USA Today reports. About 30,000 providers—5 percent of the total number—were found to have cheated on their taxes, mostly by withholding payroll taxes from employees but never remitting that money to the government. The money was then diverted for either personal use or to fund the business, with some individuals accumulating millions of dollars in assets. The report acknowledges that collecting these taxes may be difficult for the federal government because the fact that states administer Medicaid denies the feds their usual enforcement mechanism of reducing payments until what is owed is paid. The states mentioned in the report were California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas.