Enrollment of Children in Medicaid – Alaska

Increased Medicaid usage spikes cost, By Lisa Demer, March 7, 2010, Anchorage Daily News: “The single biggest item in the Alaska state budget is experiencing a costly growth spurt. It’s Medicaid — the state-federal insurance program for poor and low-income people. The cost is sure to top $1.2 billion this budget year and is expected to scale $1.3 billion the next. About 11,000 more children enrolled in the last 18 months. Doctors’ rates went up. And more people eligible for the program began to use it, perhaps out of anxiety over all the talk in Congress about national health care reform. A weakened state economy is at least partly to blame, a legislative consultant told lawmakers recently. The state unemployment rate is rising, and along with it, the numbers of Alaskans turning to food stamps and Medicaid, consultant Janet Clarke, a former top official in the state Department of Health and Social Services, told the House Finance Committee recently…”