- Legislators seek to expand Medicaid, By Warren Wolfe, May 10, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Legislative conferees agreed Sunday that expanding Medicaid should be part of the eventual compromise they will take to the House and Senate as early as Monday in a package of health and human service measures to cut the state’s budget deficit. Gov. Tim Pawlenty has strongly opposed expanding Medicaid to cover health care for childless adults earning less than 75 percent of the poverty guideline. Even though it would bring in about $1 billion in federal money over the next three years, he argues that the state cannot afford to provide the required $1 billion match…”
- Nurses, doctors, hospitals urge shift to Medicaid, By Warren Wolfe, May 11, 2010, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Leaders of the state’s hospital, nurse and doctors’ associations added their voices to a health care debate between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and DFL legislators Monday, urging the state to cover its poorest residents with the state-federal Medicaid health program rather than a slimmed-down state plan negotiated last month. With a week to go before the Legislature is to adjourn, the groups urged enactment of a bill supported by DFL leaders and opposed by Pawlenty that would shift about 37,000 patients from General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) to Medicaid, called Medical Assistance (MA) in Minnesota…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty