title: The voice of advocates in health care policymaking for the poor.
abstract: Connecticut's Medicaid Managed Care Council gave advocates for the poor an opportunity to monitor the state's Medicaid reform and provided a forum for public discussion of the program's main goals: cost control; improved quality and access to mainstream health care services. Participants engaged in an active discussion of the first two goals, but largely ignored mainstream access. We discuss why this issue did not generate public debate even though many advocates expressed concern about the issue during private interviews. We conclude that they chose not to discuss the issue publicly because they felt that an attainable solution did not exist.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, USA.
authors.forename: Colleen M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Grogan
authors.forename: Michael K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Gusmano
mesh_terms: D003237:Connecticut; D003254:Consumer Advocacy; D003363:Cost Control; D006291:Health Policy; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000458:organization & administration; D008484:Medicaid / Q000458:organization & administration; D011050:Policy Making; D011203:Poverty; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D014481:United States