- Reports predict increasing financial burden from health care, By Brian Tumulty, September 30, 2009, Elmira Star-Gazette: “New York’s Medicaid program will experience a financial crisis if Congress doesn’t enact health care legislation, according to two studies released Wednesday. Ten years from now, state officials could face a 93 percent rise in the cost of providing Medicaid services to adults and related health services to children from low-income families, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute predict in one report…”
- Medicaid crisis looms for state, By Jerry Zremski, October 1, 2009, Buffalo News: “New York, which has continued to expand Medicaid while other fiscally pressed states trimmed benefits, now faces a potential double whammy of federal-level changes that could cost the state health care program for the poor nearly $6 billion in 2011 alone. The state’s deficit, projected at $7 billion in the fiscal year beginning next April, is projected to grow to $13 billion a year later…”
- Nearly a quarter of Florida residents have no health insurance, By Drew Harwell and Andy Boyle, October 2, 2009, St. Petersburg Times: “Lawrence Rill, an out-of-work Clearwater tradesman, was preparing to donate plasma when a nurse gave him the news: His blood pressure was dangerously high and his body was in ‘stroke mode.’ Rill, 50, needed prompt medical attention. But he hasn’t been able to afford health insurance for 15 years. Even when times were better, and he was working at Home Depot, the weekly $75 premium would have eaten up a fifth of his paycheck. Sound familiar? Florida has the second-lowest rate of health insurance for people younger than 65 in the country, trailing only Texas, a new U.S. Census survey shows. Excluding Medicare-eligible senior citizens, one in four Floridians lives without any form of medical coverage…”
Day: October 2, 2009
Food Stamp Application Process and Fingerprinting – Texas
A food stamp fingerprint feud, By Corrie MacLaggan, October 2, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “The federal agency that oversees food stamps wants Texas to stop fingerprinting applicants as a way to save resources and speed up what the agency says is an unacceptably slow application system. But because state law requires the fingerprinting, the Health and Human Services Commission finds itself caught between what the Legislature mandates and what federal officials want. ‘One of the things I think Texas needs to do is streamline their operations,’ said William Ludwig, a regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. ‘Finger imaging is very time-consuming.’ Texas is one of four states with such a requirement, which supporters – including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst – say is an important way to prevent people from collecting benefits under more than one name. Critics have said it’s invasive and a waste of money and seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist…”
Pennsylvania State Budget Impasse and Social Services
State budget impasse threatens government-funded social services, By Brad Bumsted, October 2, 2009, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “A two-week-old state budget deal among legislative leaders and Gov. Ed Rendell fell apart Thursday as Pennsylvania reaches the 94th day of an impasse that threatens government-funded social services. ‘It is unconscionable that both sides cannot seem to find middle ground in order to pass a new budget,’ Grant Oliphant, president and CEO of The Pittsburgh Foundation, said yesterday. ‘Increasing numbers of families and individuals depend on social- and human-services support for their very survival, and I am deeply worried that it is going to take a tragedy to bring our state leaders to a compromise.’ The Pittsburgh Foundation yesterday granted more money to a fund established to help people hurt by the recession – raising the emergency grants to more than $1 million…”