- Medicaid shortfall: $64 million gap in Alabama budget threatens services, By Markeshia Ricks, August 19, 2010, Montgomery Advertiser: “Alabama is enjoying its lowest infant-mortality rate in state history and the state’s top doctor said part of the reason is because of a program that is now faced with a $64 million hole in its budget for fiscal 2011. Medicaid, the state and federally funded health-care program for low-income people, absorbed the cost of care for many pregnant women who lost their jobs and/or their health insurance in the past two years because of a down economy. The federal government is providing $133 million for the program, but that is far less than the $197 million that lawmakers expected and budgeted for the program for fiscal 2011 which starts in just over a month. Failure to fill that $64 million shortfall could not only cause a reduction in direct services to needy people, it could hurt the state’s entire health care system and its economy…”
- Report: Nebraska Medicaid costs likely to soar, By Nancy Hicks, August 18, 2010, Lincoln Journal Star: “The price tag for federal health care reform is ‘staggering and shocking,’ Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday as he released the results of an independent study. The state will pay $526.3 million to $765.9 million more over the next 10 years for required expansion of Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans, Heineman said. The cost could force the state to cut funding to education or raise taxes, he said. The $765 million represents an 8.5 percent increase in state spending over 10 years, assuming the highest participation rate. ‘This unfunded and unparalleled Medicaid mandate is unfair and unsustainable to Nebraska and other states,’ Heineman said during a news conference focused on a report by Milliman Inc., an independent actuarial firm. But the report also indicates 145,000 additional low-income Nebraskans will have access to health care through Medicaid, said Sen. Jeremy Nordquist, a member of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty