State Budgets and Medicaid

Posted on June 28, 2010 by townsend

• Congress blasts Medicaid hole in states’ budgets, By Tami Luhby, June 28, 2010, CNNMoney.com: “Young children in Massachusetts will lose state-funded mental health services. Welfare recipients will see their employment and training programs slashed. And homeless families will lose nearly all their state assistance to move into more permanent housing. Massachusetts lawmakers had to make these and other difficult cuts last week after discovering they had to slash another nearly $700 million out of the state budget. The Bay State had assumed Congress would pass $24 billion in additional Medicaid funding for states before their fiscal years start on July 1. But that money hasn’t materialized. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., effectively killed the bill last week after deficit-wary Republicans blocked it for a third time. So officials in Massachusetts and 29 other states that counted on the funds to balance their budgets are left with the task of slashing services and payrolls once again…”
• No Medicaid money as new fiscal year draws near, By John Gramlich, June 28, 2010, Stateline.org: “A new fiscal year is set to begin, and at least 22 states are counting on federal Medicaid money that has yet to materialize. A congressional proposal to approve more Medicaid funding – which was originally part of the stimulus package and is set to expire at the end of 2010, halfway through the fiscal year that begins in most states on Thursday (July 1) – ran into Republican opposition in the Senate last week. The provision was part of a larger package that included an extension of unemployment insurance for jobless Americans. Republicans argue that the programs are worthwhile, but that the government must curtail spending…”