States join forces to fend off Medicaid cuts

Reuters: Analysis: States Lobby Against Medicaid Cuts in Congress
With billions of dollars in Medicaid spending at risk in Congress, states are forming a loose confederacy to oppose any federal cuts that could damage state budgets already awash in red ink. The "red" and "blue" states that mark America's political divide between conservative and liberal sympathies are often far apart on issues involving health care, including Medicaid, the $420 billion-a-year program for the poor. But lobbyists say governors, legislators and other state officials, Republican and Democrat alike, have found common ground in a push to convince a special congressional deficit panel that White House-backed Medicaid cuts totaling $41 billion will only weaken a system that already struggles to deliver care to 60 million beneficiaries (Morgan, 9/29).