States struggle with strapped budgets, cuts to health programs

The Dallas Morning News: "Lawmakers have been thinking ahead to a massive shortfall, topping $10 billion, that's probably coming when they write the next budget in 2011. But state officials told them Monday that they'll have to fix a hole in the current budget, too. Rising health care costs have dug a hole of about $1.7 billion, the officials said. Texas has about 350,000 more poor people on government health insurance than it did last year ... 'We're running 11 percent ... growth in the Medicaid program,' said Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs ... Other House members criticized proposed cuts to a start-up fund for community health clinics and to family planning clinics' Medicaid payments" (Garrett, 3/9).

The Arizona Republic: "Lawmakers are poised to vote this week on a state budget that would eliminate health-care coverage for 47,000 children, remove 310,000 Arizonans from the state's Medicaid program and shift juvenile corrections to the counties. And that's the kinder, gentler version of the fiscal 2011 budget. Lawmakers based the plan on the assumption that voters will approve a temporary 1-cent-per-dollar increase in the state sales tax on May 18. ... Hospitals officials worry that tightening the eligibility criteria for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which is expected to exclude 310,000 adults from coverage, will fill emergency rooms with the uninsured. ... The budget also calls for eliminating KidsCare to save $18 million. The federally subsidized health-care program serves 47,000 children" (Pitzl, 3/9).

The Miami Herald: "When the Public Health Trust meets Tuesday to consider $165.4 million in budget cuts, one of the toughest debates is likely to be over the proposed closing of Jackson South [hospital], the suburban facility on which the system has pinned its hopes for the past six years. The hospital ... is in the midst of a taxpayer-financed $102 million, four-story expansion that is 40 percent complete. ... Since voters approved a bond issue in 2004 that included the hospital construction funds, Jackson Health System has hoped a new facility would lure customers in the affluent southern suburbs who have commercial insurance. Now, future potential has been trumped by the present grim reality: Forty-five percent of the patients entering South's emergency room are uninsured" (Dorschner, 3/9).

WKBT / The Associated Press: "Minnesota legislative panels are taking a closer look this week at a compromise that will preserve a government health plan for the very poor" (3/9).

BusinessWeek / The Associated Press, on the same issue: "Last week's deal between Democratic lawmakers and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty to preserve a Minnesota health care plan for the very poor went beyond providing relief to more than 30,000 people who rely on the program. ... The two sides still have big issues to resolve ... Similar disputes over health care eligibility and funding dragged out the end of sessions in" past years and "Democrats predicted health and welfare spending will remain in play at the end of session, including nursing homes, chemical dependency treatment and possibly the MinnesotaCare health plan for the working poor" (Lohn, 3/8).