State Capitol deal reached to continue health care for poor, By Warren Wolfe and Baird Helgeson, March 5, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Gov. Tim Pawlenty and DFL legislators, who have clashed for eight months over health care for indigent Minnesotans, reached agreement Friday on a plan to continue broad state-funded coverage for the state’s poorest residents. General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC), which was to end April 1 after two vetoes by Pawlenty, will continue unchanged through May, then shift into a scaled-back program centered in Minnesota hospitals. The agreement, announced at the Capitol by Pawlenty and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, followed a month of intense lobbying by hospital executives, poverty advocates and Minnesota’s Roman Catholic bishops. It resolved, with surprising speed, an emotional argument over the state’s obligation to maintain a social safety net in the face of huge budget deficits…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty