I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The New Mexico Human Services Department provided a few more details on how the state will use the $1 million meant to help state officials research, plan, establish and operate a health care exchange.
The money will:
…
The New Mexico Department of Human Services has won $1 million to help the state research and plan how to establish and operate a state health insurance exchange, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman‘s office announced today.
The health care…
Nearly one in four Californians — 8.4 million or 24.3 percent — lacks health insurance and the rate of uninsured in many California counties is even larger than that statewide average according to a study reported on by the…
New Mexico built its current state budget on the assumption that Congress would extend stimulus funding for Medicaid through the end of the fiscal year, next June. Right now the extra funding ends Dec. 31, 2010.
Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, told The Independent he’s already preparing for the possibility that Congress, even if it acts, won’t cover the full $160 million the state budgeted in anticipation of the federal dollars.
But in Georgia, Gov. Sonny Perdue has already ordered leaner state agencies to cut another 4 percent in spending starting next month because the state’s new budget relies on federal stimulus dollars that might not come, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting.
New Mexico collected $115.4 million in child support payments, a record, for the fiscal year that just ended June 30, including $8.2 million from unemployment checks, the Santa Fe New Mexican is reporting.
A majority of the $115.4 million, about 60 percent, was gotten through withheld wages, according to the paper.
The striking figure here is the amount of money the state took in from unemployment checks. The state’s net of $8.2 million from unemployment checks easily bested collections through that method in the previous fiscal year — $3.8 million — and $1.2 million in the fiscal year before that, the paper quoted a spokeswoman for the state’s Human Services Department as saying. More …
After a little-known report found the New Mexico’s for-profit hospitals were making more profit than their peers in neighboring states and more than the national average, the state is taking steps to cut costs. For starters, New Mexico hopes to save millions by reducing what Medicaid pays hospitals for outpatient X-rays, CT scans and MRI’s. It’s also considering asking the poor to pay $75 monthly premiums.
The state has won $385,000 in federal money to help rural, low-income New Mexico families using propane and wood burning stoves to meet their home heating needs, the state Human Services Department announced Wednesday.
Families eligible for receiving the…
The state is thinking about giving tens of thousands of New Mexicans living at or below the poverty line a choice: pay $75 monthly premiums currently paid by the state or risk losing their health care coverage.
State officials conceded this week if the cost-saving measure were adopted it could push some of the more than 45,000 low-income adults making $903 or less a month off New Mexico’s health care rolls.
“They would lose coverage,” Human Services Department (HSD) spokeswoman Betina Gonzales McCracken said of individuals who might find paying monthly premiums financially out of reach.
The proposal, one of dozens under consideration, would apply to a program once viewed as a way to lower the state’s high uninsured rate, which is second only to Texas –the State Coverage Insurance (SCI) initiative, which New Mexico started several years ago.
The idea already is running into opposition from state lawmakers who say demanding $75 a month from individuals who might not be able to afford it would limit access to health care.
“I know we have a tough budget,” said Rep. Danice Picraux, D-Albuquerque, and chairwoman of the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee. The panel is charged with studying health care issues between legislative sessions.
“I can’t tell them where they should be cutting or re-directing money, but it’s not my first choice,” Picraux said.
Ideas to cut costs
The idea of making low-income residents pay their own premiums is part of the New Mexico Human Services Department’s ongoing attempt to address ongoing budget pressures.
It also is a reminder of how harrowing the state’s path over the next three years is as it struggles to provide health care for its poorest residents before 2014, when the federal government swoops in to assume most of the costs under the new federal health care law.
While the individuals targeted by the proposal live at or just below the federal poverty level, they currently make too much to qualify for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program. Under the new health care law, they would automatically qualify for Medicaid in 2014, when the new law expands eligibility to individuals who earn 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
State Medicaid director Carolyn Ingram told the Independent on Tuesday that the idea of doing away with premium assistance for this population is only a suggestion, and that no final decisions have been made.
But she acknowledged that the state is considering that idea and others, including charging low-income residents nominal co-pays for emergency room services, because the state’s Medicaid program is under severe budget pressures. Medicaid is a primary funding source for the SCI program.
New Mexico’s budget crunch
A confluence of factors is creating the financial pressure.
First, state officials project that the number of New Mexicans, adults and children, using Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will grow by 8 percent between this past December and June of next year, from 479,000 to 518,000 individuals. CHIP provides health care for low-income children from families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid.
Currently New Mexico pays roughly 20 percent of Medicaid costs, thanks to federal stimulus dollars. The federal government picks up the other 80 percent. But paying one fifth of the costs is a struggle because of lagging revenues, state officials say.
Add to that the fact that federal stimulus dollars now helping New Mexico pay for Medicaid run out in December, unless Congress extends the deadline. If Congress doesn’t extend the federal Medicaid stimulus dollars, New Mexico will have a $160 million budget hole for the year that starts July 1. That’s because the state budget the Legislature passed in March assumed congressional approval of an extension and budgeted $160 million in the anticipated dollars to help cover costs.
It’s unclear whether Congress will pass that extension.
So, in essence, New Mexico faces a double whammy: find money to replace the lost federal dollars while trying to figure out how to address the growing enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP.
Financial strain on SCI
All those budget pressures are placing a strain on the State Coverage Insurance program, which is funded both by federal and state dollars, Ingram said.
The program was always envisioned as a way to extend health care coverage to New Mexicans who either didn’t have it because their employers didn’t provide it or because they made too much money to qualify for government programs.
Because it’s not an entitlement program, the federal government caps how much New Mexico can spend in federal dollars on the program. At the same time the state is running short of money.
“Unfortunately with the state budget, we are running out of both pots of money,” Ingram said.
Currently the state picks up the $75 monthly premiums for more than 45,000 adults across the state, making them eligible for New Mexico’s State Coverage Insurance program.
But the budget pressures are making the state’s assistance increasingly difficult, she said.
As soon as October New Mexicans and small businesses here will be able to comparison shop on options for health insurance, state officials said Thursday.
A federal website should be up and running by summer to provide consumers general information…
In late March, an employee of a subcontractor for the company that processes claims and provides dental benefits for the State’s Medicaid program, filed a stolen car report for a vehicle whose trunk contained an ”unencrypted” laptop loaded with patient…
In 2014, the federal government will pay 100 percent of health care costs under Medicaid, the government’s low-income health care program, thanks to the new federal health care reform law. But between now and then the health care portion of New Mexico’s state budget could soar as more people enroll in the government program and federal stimulus dollars disappear.
Four thousand additional New Mexican families could qualify for federal food aid under new rules laying out who can and cannot qualify for the program.
On Thursday New Mexico expanded eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known…
Several states stand to benefit financially from the new federal health care reform legislation, according to a story today in the Christian Science Monitor. And New Mexico could be one of them.
The potential windfall is based on these states’…
The 465,000 New Mexicans without health care coverage will be most affected by health care reform, as it mandates that they obtain coverage, either through purchasing it or through the Medicaid program. At least 100,000 of them will likely become eligible for Medicaid, while many with moderate incomes will get help buying insurance.
Photo by Mills Baker
Here’s another sign of how the poor economy is affecting New Mexico: state data show that 70,000 more New Mexicans are using food stamps than just a year ago.
According to data from the New Mexico Human Services Department, individual use of the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, rose by 28 percent in New Mexico from September 2008 to September 2009, when nearly 325,000 New Mexicans were collecting benefits that help them buy food.
Food stamps help individuals and families living around the poverty level — roughly $22,000 for a family of four. And the increase in food stamps usage in New Mexico has coincided with a similar rise in the state’s unemployment rate, which has risen dramatically over the past year. The rate reached 7.9 percent in October, up from 4.5 percent in October 2008, according to the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions.
As bad as the numbers are, they may not capture the full picture of how widespread hunger is in New Mexico, officials said Monday.
“Not are we only seeing low-income people who need food,” said Sonya Warwick of Albuquerque-based Road Runner Food Bank, which distributes foodstuffs to pantries and soup kitchens across the state, “[but] we’re seeing people whose hours are cut. They may make too much money to qualify for food stamps.”
But they are having trouble putting food on the table, she said.
In the past, the Road Runner Food Bank has estimated that 100,000 New Mexicans who are not on assistance go hungry at some time or another, Warwick said.
The rise in food stamp cases, which is almost entirely federally funded, offers a glimpse into how the recession is hitting New Mexicans. And the picture isn’t pretty.
Over the past year, nearly 40,000 adults joined the program’s rolls, compared to nearly 30,000 children, data show. Adults make up just over 50 percent of the food stamp recipients in New Mexico.
Food stamp usage rose nearly everywhere in New Mexico, in urban and rural areas.
Bernalillo County saw an increase of nearly 40 percent from September 2008 to September 2009 as the caseload grew by more than 12,000 cases, state data show.
Santa Fe County, meanwhile, recorded a 33 percent increase in food stamp cases while Dona Ana County, which includes Las Cruces, saw the caseload rise by 24 percent.
Rural areas were equally hard it, if not harder hit by the economic troubles.
Lea County, in southeastern New Mexico, saw food stamp cases rise by more than half, jumping to 3,459 this September, up from 2,263 cases a year before. Colfax County, up north, saw its caseload rise by nearly 40 percent, jumping from 533 cases last year to 745 cases this September.
The rise in New Mexico’s food stamp cases has led to increased costs, which jumped from $23 million in September 2008 to more than $41 million in September 2009, data show. The federal government foots the bill for the program.
Hunger of course is not confined to New Mexico. More and more Americans are going hungry, according to recent reports.
According to a research report issued earlier this month from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more and more Americans are struggling with where to find their next meal. The report, authored by Mark Nord, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, said that 17 million households across the nation at some time during the year had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.
The prevalence of food insecurity was up from 11.1 percent (13 million households) in 2007 and was the highest observed since nationally representative food security surveys were initiated in 1995.
Meanwhile, the New York Times published a story over the weekend detailing how the federal program, has increased dramatically during the recession.
An interactive map that ran with the Times story showed how many people in each county use the program.
Torrance County was the worst off county in New Mexico, according to the Times’ interactive map. According to the graphic, nearly 25 percent of all Torrance County’s 17,000 residents, and 50 percent of its children, were on food stamps in 2009, an 11 percent rise from 2007.
But Torrance County was nowhere near the top of the list of worst-off counties across the country as measured by the number of food stamp cases compared to population, the graphic showed.
According to the graphic, Wade Hampton County in Alaska earned that dubious honor. Nearly 50 percent of that county’s residents, and 62 percent of its children, were on food stamps.
The state stopped accepting individuals into the State Coverage Insurance program (SCI), which helps nearly 50,000 low-income individuals and small employers statewide afford health insurance.
A just-published survey of Medicaid directors in all 50 states shows that New Mexico officials aren’t alone in fretting about how to adequately fund the government’s low-income health insurance program. More …
The state’s unemployment rate rose to 7.5 percent in August, but that depressing figure could have some positive effects. The increase could unlock up to $10 million in additional federal stimulus funding for Medicaid in New Mexico. The new money, if it materializes, would come as the state faces a $40 million shortfall in funding for healthcare for the neediest New Mexicans.
Signs are everywhere that the economic slump is affecting those who have the least resources.
And here’s another: applications for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) – the government program once known as welfare – has jumped in New Mexico. More …
As deep recession settles in on the American economy, more and more people are relying on the public benefits safety net to help them put food on their table or meet health care needs.
A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps in one recent month, and Medicaid enrollment around the country is surging by record numbers in many states.
In New Mexico, our unemployment is rising — up to 5.1 percent in January from 3.7 percent a year earlier — and we are seeing some of the worst job growth statistics since 1982-83.
Indeed, 8,600 jobs were lost in New Mexico between January 2008 and January 2009. Low-income working families have been particularly hard hit, as job losses have been concentrated in blue collar industries — 5,500 jobs lost in the construction industry, 1,800 in manufacturing, 3,300 in retail trade, and 1,100 in leisure and hospitality.
Against this background of lost job opportunities, New Mexico retains the third highest rate of poverty in the nation and the second highest rate of food insecurity.
Yet, in the face of worsening economic conditions and precisely when safety net programs should be providing support to more low-income families, participation in some of these programs has begun to stagnate and even decline.
According to the most recent data from the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD), there was a surprising drop at the beginning of this year of the number of New Mexicans receiving help from two of our state’s primary safety net programs — General Assistance and Medicaid.
Perhaps most shocking was the decline in enrollment in the General Assistance program (pdf). General Assistance provides small amounts of cash assistance to people who are seriously disabled and very poor. In some cases, it helps children in difficult circumstances. The number of New Mexicans receiving help from this program fell by 40 percent since November — the steepest decline in ten years — as new HSD procedures caused application approvals to decline precipitously.
Only 11 percent of the 1,042 New Mexicans seeking help in January and February were able to receive it — the highest denial rate in recent history. Furthermore, the department cut benefits to people already enrolled in the program.
Other key parts of our state’s safety net are also faltering.
Medicaid, the program that helps more low-income New Mexicans than any other by providing critical access to health care, fell by 4,448 people between September and November, according to the latest data. This is the first time since May 2007 that a significant decrease in Medicaid has occurred.
This decline in the number of New Mexicans served by the safety net programs of Medicaid and General Assistance during the worst economic downturn in at least 25 years is of grave concern.
The number of people helped by these programs should be growing right now, not decreasing.
One program that did see an increase was the food stamp program, which is funded entirely by the federal government and provides $1 per meal per day to help New Mexicans avoid hunger and the health consequences of poor nutrition. Nearly 7,000 more New Mexicans began receiving food stamps in February, underscoring the deep need that is evident in our state.
New Mexico is at a crossroads: We must make some critical choices about whether we will help the people most in need or let our public assistance programs founder.
Safety net programs not only provide relief to families facing serious hard times, they also provide some of the most effective economic stimulus measures to protect local economies.
Those on limited budgets are likely to spend every additional dollar of assistance on basic necessities, helping themselves and local businesses. For example, $5 of food stamp benefits, which are federally funded, generates $9 in local economic activity. Those dollars spent at the grocery store, in turn, help to pay the salaries of the grocery clerks, truckers who haul the food, and the farmer who grows the crops. A failure to maximize the use of these programs not only hurts families, it hurts our entire state economy.
Indeed, the federal government recently passed a “stimulus” bill to explicitly serve these dual purposes: to help states meet the needs of Americans falling into the safety net and to provide local economies with powerful economic stimulus.
More than $700 million federal dollars are now available in New Mexico through the public benefits programs. New Mexico has an enormous opportunity to draw federal dollars directly into our economy through Medicaid, the food stamp program and New Mexico Works, a program that provides small amounts of cash assistance to very poor New Mexicans for a limited amount of time.
These are unusually difficult times. Yet such moments often provide unusual opportunities to improve our lives.
New Mexicans are known for their fundamental resilience and optimism in the face of adversity. Think of how the New Deal programs of the Great Depression years provided New Mexicans with jobs, education, and the legacy of public buildings and art we cherish today.
A similar opportunity now confronts us. New Mexico should rise to the occasion by making full use of the federal stimulus bills and having our public safety net programs provide the jobs and assistance they were designed to provide.
What will it be, New Mexico?
Patricia Anders is a staff attorney with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
