Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Rounds Up Budget News in Four States

Summaries of recent news about state budgets in Florida, New York, North Dakota and Washington state appear below.

• Florida: State budget writers are considering a number of options to reduce state spending, including cuts to health care programs, the Orlando Sentinel reports. According to the Sentinel, budget authors are considering reducing spending by $194 million by requiring higher county contributions to Medicaid nursing homes and by $3.97 million by merging the state Agency for Health Care Administration's health care regulation with the state Department of Health's quality-assurance functions (Deslatte, Orlando Sentinel, 12/10).
  
  
• New York: Gov. David Paterson (D) on Tuesday will release his fiscal year 2010 budget, which will likely include "deep cuts" to hospitals, according to state health officials, the Albany Times Union reports. According to state health commissioner Richard Daines, hospitals in the state can afford to absorb the costs. Daines, Joe Baker, the governor's deputy secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, and Medicaid Director Deborah Bachrach said regardless of the cuts, they will continue to pursue Medicaid reforms, which could result in additional losses for hospitals (Crowley, Albany Times Union, 12/10). Paterson already has warned that his budget will include cuts to Medicaid (Hartocollis, New York Times, 12/11).
  
  
• North Dakota: Healthy Steps, the state's version of SCHIP, would be expanded to nearly double the number of beneficiaries if Gov. John Hoeven's (R) budget is approved, the Fargo Forum reports. Under Hoeven's proposal, the program's income eligibility cap for families would be raised from 150% of the federal poverty level to 200%, which would expand the number of eligible children from 3,800 to 6,021 -- a 58.4% increase. According to the Forum, "Legislators have balked at expanding Healthy Steps beyond 150% for fear that federal support could drop in the future" (Springer, Fargo Forum, 12/8).
  
  
• Washington state: In an effort to close a $7 million budget gap, the state Department of Health will drop three of its programs, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. The three programs are a colorectal cancer screening program for low-income residents, a monitoring system to inform providers about patients' medical histories and containment-testing for drinking water systems. The cuts represent a 16% reduction to the department's $42.8 million budget (Ho, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12/10). In related news, health care advocates are concerned that when Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) releases her budget next week, it will include cuts to dental benefits for adult Medicaid beneficiaries. Washington is one of only a few states that offer dental benefits to adult Medicaid beneficiaries (Song, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 12/11).