- Older, suburban and struggling, ‘near poor’ startle the Census, By Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff and Sabrina Tavernise, November 18, 2011, New York Times: “They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by. Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called ‘near poor’ and sometimes simply overlooked – and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood. When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people – one in three Americans – either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it…”
- Counting the poor in America proves difficult, controversial, By Elizabeth Stuart, November 18, 2011, Deseret News: “How many poor people are there in America? It depends how you ask the question. The official U.S. Census Bureau report released in September put the number at 46.2 million. In a second, unofficial report published last week, the bureau estimated the number is closer to 49 million. The official measure, devised in 1964 to measure progress in President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” is based on the idea that families spend one-third of their income on food. To establish federal poverty lines, experts calculated the lowest annual cost of feeding a family and multiplied it by three. Poverty experts have long criticized the method as outdated and simplistic. The measure does not account for money received in food stamps and other benefits or the money lost to taxes and medical care. It also doesn’t account for regional differences in cost of living. The new report, known as the supplemental poverty measure, attempts to address these factors…”
Day: November 21, 2011
State Medicaid Cuts – Texas
Texas may cut Medicaid reimbursements to healthcare providers, By Darren Barbee, November 20, 2011, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Therapy and physician groups in Texas are alarmed about proposed cuts in government healthcare reimbursement rates that they say would hurt the sickest and poorest Texas patients, most of them children. Therapists stand to lose millions of dollars as Medicaid reimbursement rates for their services are slashed. The average reduction for home health providers, for example, would be 35 percent. All told, the state plan calls for cutting $150 million a year for therapists; that is 19 percent of the $792 million they received last year. The state would save millions more with cuts in co-payments to physicians for people covered by both Medicaid and Medicare. But doctors say the proposed change will further push doctors from wanting to practice in less affluent parts of the state…”