• State Medicaid programs face $141 million shortfall, report says, By Jason Stein, January 31, 2012, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Wisconsin’s health programs for the poor have a $141 million shortfall in state money over the next year and a half, new estimates show. So far, GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s administration has saving plans that would more that cover that potential deficit in the state’s Medicaid health programs. But a new report by the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget office questions whether all of the saving will materialize. With costs in the program still substantial and the saving uncertain, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau found in its new report that the finances of the health programs will need careful monitoring. The report comes ahead of new estimates expected next week that should shed more light on the overall condition of the state’s strained budget…”
• Medicaid rolls rose even as Pa. disqualified many, new calculation shows, By Don Sapatkin, January 26, 2012, Philadelphia Inquirer: “The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare’s stepped-up efforts over the summer to target waste, fraud, and abuse quickly bore fruit in the fall. Adult Medicaid enrollment alone was down 109,000 through November. Cause and effect seemed clear. Advocates for the poor and disabled were outraged. Now, DPW has suddenly changed its reporting method. Revised calculations show a decline of just 6,000 participants for the same period. And when December is added in, enrollment is up by 23,000 since August - a time when officials agree that tens of thousands of people lost benefits after overdue reviews found they were ineligible. DPW says the new reporting method is just as accurate as the old one, merely different. But it will not disclose its new method or recalculate the latest Medicaid data using the old formula…”
• Medicaid copays could increase in South Dakota, By Megan Luther, January 31, 2012, Sioux Falls Argus Leader: “Medicaid recipients in South Dakota will face larger copays for their medication if the federal government signs off on a state plan designed to drive down costs in the program that provides health care to poor people. Requiring the larger copays is one of 11 recommendations put forth by the Medicaid Solutions Work Group, an assembly of health care providers, lawmakers and state employees assigned with finding savings the the program. The group began work last year at the request of Gov. Dennis Daugaard…”
• Medicaid change to cut pharmacy payments in Texas, By Jim Fuquay, January 28, 2012, Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “When Marwan Hattab opened Wedgwood Pharmacy just over a year ago, he knew from his previous years in the business how much it costs to fill a prescription. And he knows it’s quite a bit more than he’ll be paid under a new reimbursement system for Texas’ Medicaid program. The state’s move to managed care for Medicaid prescriptions goes into effect March 1, and Hattab and other independent pharmacists say they stand to lose money on every prescription they write for the federal/state healthcare program for the poor. A coalition of Texas pharmacies said last week that the dispensing fee that pharmacists receive for filing a Texas Medicaid prescription will plunge from about $6.50 to as little as $1.35. The change is part of legislation passed last year that aims to save the state an estimated $100 million over the next two years…”

Experts: Half-day kindergarten a ‘disaster’, By Alfred Lubrano, May 1, 2011, Philadelphia Inquirer: “The Philadelphia School District’s plan to cut full-day kindergarten to help balance its budget is being decried by national education experts as a ‘disaster’ and a ‘very bad decision’ that could harm the development of thousands of children - especially the poor. At the same time, many Philadelphia parents are angered and worried that half-day kindergarten would force them to choose between quitting work to be home for their children or placing them in questionable or costly day care. And local child advocates warn that community child-care centers could not handle the tidal wave of 12,700 kindergartners likely to need placement in some kind of program…”

Study quantifies food insecurity - hunger - in the suburbs, By Alfred Lubrano, April 21, 2011, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Hunger quiets people, and there was almost no conversation among the 145 who gathered in an Upper Darby church parking lot, awaiting a charitable distribution of produce, on a recent wet spring morning. Breaking the silence, Juliana Noble said, ‘A lot of changes in my life brought me here today.’ The 50-year-old mother of a high school senior from Yeadon, Noble was laid off from her job as a course adviser at a Main Line college two years ago. She now works part-time at a clothing store, struggling to pay the mortgage and utilities. Fresh produce doesn’t fit in her budget, so she shows up at Christ Lutheran Church for the bananas, potatoes, lettuce, and other food in the weekly Fresh for All distribution by Philabundance, the hunger-relief agency…”

• Hunger in Philadelphia: The safety net is torn, By Alfred Lubrano, November 5, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Myra Young fits a nebulizer mask over her son Todd’s face to beat back his chronic asthma. Inhaling vaporized medicine that keeps him breathing, the 4-year-old with large eyes leafs through a children’s Bible to pass the time. Young, 41, is an unemployed nursing assistant who lost her job in 2007 caring for Todd during his two-month hospitalization. She watches nervously as the whirring machine eats electricity. The power to Young’s two-bedroom rental in Kensington will be cut in two weeks because the bill has climbed to $770. She lives in the poorest place in Pennsylvania - the First Congressional District. According to a national poll, the district is the second-hungriest in America. Young, who is separated, is not without help. She receives monthly welfare payments of $205, along with $362 in food stamps, and $674 in Supplemental Security Income for Todd’s illness - part of the safety net meant to aid the poor. Young’s husband, a hotel kitchen worker, chips in as well. But all that help still keeps mother and son stuck at the poverty level - not nearly enough to pay the $625 rent, and feed Young’s hungry child and his voracious breathing machine. Because Young hasn’t worked since Todd’s hospitalization, it’s harder for her to get jobs; employers are wary of her two years away from nursing…”
• Inquirer Editorial: We are what we eat, Editorial, November 5, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Hunger isn’t confined to a single zip code. But there are few places where its impact is more evident than within this city’s First Congressional District, rated the second-hungriest in America. Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano recently detailed how that hunger, rooted in poverty, can paradoxically lead to obesity. Many among the poor are overweight not from eating too much, but because they eat the wrong foods…”

• More predicted to receive food aid after rule change, By Tom Robertson, November 1, 2010, Minnesota Public Radio: “Beginning Monday, tens of thousands more Minnesotans will qualify for food assistance, when new guidelines go into place for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — what we used to call food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has increased the income eligibility for food support. A family of four with a gross monthly income of roughly $3,000 or less now qualifies. County social service agencies across the state are gearing up for a potential flood of families seeking help. The Minnesota Department of Human Services anticipates the change will increase the food support caseload by about 16,000 cases per year, impacting an additional 34,000 people annually. In Minnesota, the federal program is known as the Food Support Program. As of May of this year, some 425,000 Minnesotans were receiving food support each month…”
• When poverty means hunger for the right food, By Alfred Lubrano, October 31, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Mold grows thick and black on the walls of Celeata Bailey’s Norris Square bedroom. Because most of the ceiling is missing, Bailey, 21, gets soaked in bed when it rains. Her family puts up duct tape to keep the bathroom wall from collapsing. Raw sewage burbles in the basement, and the family stores surgical masks in the kitchen for anyone who has to descend into its putrid depths. Bailey’s poverty is evident throughout the house, which sits in the First Congressional District, the second-hungriest in America, according to a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, one of the largest polls ever taken. But poverty is also written on Bailey’s body, made heavy since childhood by a poor person’s diet of cheap, fattening, processed foods larded with high-fructose corn syrup, fat, and salt. As a result of her diet, Bailey has suffered from diabetes since she was 13. It is, doctors acknowledge, a paradox that hunger and obesity are linked. And doctors say obesity and diabetes among the poor are on the rise, as many families faced with hunger often have little choice but to eat nutritionally disastrous foods to survive…”

Researchers fight to save the region’s tiniest babies, By Josh Goldstein, October 25, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Delivered by cesarean section 11 weeks early, Quinzel Kane Jr. was so tiny that his 1.6-pound body nearly fit in his father’s hand. A week later, the child developed a leaky bowel - a common problem in underweight babies - and was rushed to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Over the next few months, specialists there would fight to keep him from becoming part of a grim statistic: the high infant mortality rate in pockets across the region. Philadelphia’s infant mortality rate stands among the nation’s highest - rivaling Detroit’s and Baltimore’s - and is on par with those of Uruguay in South America and Bosnia in eastern Europe. But the rates are high too in some suburban towns, such as Upper Darby and Norristown. And while murders grab far more attention here, the number of infant deaths is actually greater across the region…”

A portrait of hunger, By Alfred Lubrano, October 10, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “There’s not enough food in Imani Sullivan’s life. At home, Sullivan, 31, often doesn’t set a fork for herself at the table so that her sons, ages 3 and 10, can eat. Naturally diminutive, Sullivan looks frail these days. She has dropped 15 pounds since losing her part-time janitor job during the summer. Each family meal feels like an obligation she cannot meet, a daily burden multiplied by three. ‘It makes me feel like less of a mom not to have food,’ she says in her mother’s North Philadelphia apartment, suddenly overcome by the hardship. Tears form in her eyes. ‘Every day, I walk into a brick wall. No bricks fall - there’s no dust, no crumbling. Just the wall. It never moves.’ The hunger in Sullivan’s house is distressingly commonplace throughout the area of Philadelphia where she lives: Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District. At a time when more people in America are suffering from hunger, the First Congressional District is one of the hungriest, second only to the Bronx, N.Y., according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, an ongoing national poll done in conjunction with the Food Research and Action Center in Washington. Meanwhile, U.S. Census data released in late September show that the district, with a poverty rate of nearly 29 percent in 2009, is among the 10 poorest in the United States, and poorer than any other district in Pennsylvania…”

Bill would extend Phila. schools’ Universal Feeding program, By Alfred Lubrano, June 11, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “A unique free-lunch program for poor children in Philadelphia schools would continue for five more years under a bill introduced Thursday on Capitol Hill. The city’s Universal Feeding program, which allows more than 110,000 students to eat free lunches without having to fill out applications, was included in the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act. U.S. Reps. Joe Sestak (D., Pa.) and Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) said Thursday they worked with other members of the Philadelphia congressional delegation and their staffs to get the provision for the Philadelphia program into the House bill. The Senate version does not have a similar provision. Without the Philadelphia provision, thousands of poor city students could face the loss of free lunches, advocates say. Children and their families in poor communities don’t always complete such forms, creating the potential for youngsters to go hungry…”

Formula could cost Phila.’s needy students free lunch, By Alfred Lubrano, May 23, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Thousands of poor Philadelphia students could face the loss of free lunch if a new method of calculating eligibility becomes federal law. Though the change could extend free lunch to students across America, it threatens a program unique to Philadelphia known as Universal Feeding, which allows more than 110,000 students in poor schools to eat free lunches without having to fill out applications. Children and their families in poor communities don’t always complete such forms, creating the potential for kids to go hungry. The suggested change could deny free lunches to as many as 51,182 students - 46 percent of the Philadelphia children who now receive those meals, said Michael Masch, chief business officer for the district…”