- States make deep cuts to health, By Pauline Vu, August 5, 2009, Stateline.org: “Although states are facing their worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, 14 found the dollars this year to increase health coverage for about 250,000 children. That’s one of the few bright spots for health within state budgets in a year in which all but a handful of states faced shortfalls and were forced to shrink taxpayer-financed programs. The 14 states – Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and West Virginia – took advantage of an additional $33 million that Congress appropriated when it reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in February. At the same time, President Obama rescinded a Bush administration directive that had hampered states’ ability to expand coverage for children whose families earned too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to buy their own health insurance…”
- Health fund for jobless runs low, By Kay Lazar, August 5, 2009, Boston Globe: “A unique state program that helps pay most health insurance costs for 27,000 unemployed Massachusetts residents is on the cusp of going broke, setting off a debate between healthcare advocates and business leaders who say funding it is a burden on companies fighting for their survival. The state’s Medical Security Program, financed solely by a tax on employers, will run out of money in January because of the surge in unemployment over the past year, state officials said yesterday. The most logical way to maintain it, officials said, is to increase the per-employee tax, which hasn’t been raised since 1990…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty