Healthcare Financial News

Leaders of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) have called on congressional leaders and the Administration to take early action to stabilize the nation's economy.

Twenty states already have cut $7.6 billion from their fiscal year (FY) 2009 budgets, and 30 states have identified additional shortfalls totaling more than $30 billion. Twenty-five states also have identified shortfalls of $60 billion for FY 2010. However, these numbers tell only a portion of the story, with previous budget actions and the continuing downturn producing cumulative budget gaps of more than $140 billion for FY 2009 and FY 2010. Additionally, states feel the greatest impact on their budgets in the year after a recession ends, primarily because Medicaid growth occurs late in the recession and employment growth lags the recovery. Thus, the repercussions of this downturn will last for several years--and will be much worse without swift action.

The governors and state legislators are calling on the federal government to look to existing federal-state programs because these programs are on-going and therefore the funds can be obligated quickly and expedited efficiently. They specifically request that an economic recovery strategy include a temporary enhancement for at least two years of the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, which determines the federal government’s share of state Medicaid expenditures.

Read the full release.

Children of farm workers are three times as likely as all other children and almost twice as likely as other poor children to be uninsured, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
 
Children of farm workers face a variety of health challenges, according to background information in the article. Most are Latino, a group that already has less than optimal access to pediatric health services. In addition, Mexican American migrant children who move around the United States with their farm-worker parents are two to three times more likely to be rated in poor or fair health than non-migrant Mexican American children. Farm workers’ children are often exposed to pesticides and are more likely to engage in dangerous agricultural work themselves.
 
Roberto L. Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Texas Medical Branch–Austin and Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas and colleagues analyzed results of a national survey of 3,136 farm workers with children younger than 18 years. Among the farm-worker parents, 32 percent reported that their children were uninsured, including 45 percent of migrant-worker parents. Parents who were older, had less education, had spent less time in the United States and who lived in the Southeast or Southwest were more likely to have uninsured children.
 
Read abstract.