Feds may pay for R.I. Medicaid expansion

State would not have to share increased costs until 2019

By Ted Nesi

Providence Business News Web Editor

WASHINGTON — The federal government would pick up the full cost of expanding Medicaid coverage in Rhode Island for five years under a special provision of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill.

Increasing the number of Americans eligible for Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor, is a key provision of all the various health bills moving through Congress.

The cost of Medicaid is shared by federal and state government, with the split varying based on a formula. In Rhode Island, the federal government has paid around 52 percent of Medicaid costs in recent years.

Study: R.I. social safety net ill-managed

By Chris Barrett
Providence Business News Staff Writer

Rhode Island’s social safety net is expensive and splintered, according to a report released jointly today by United Way of Rhode Island and the R.I. Public Expenditure Council.

The 58-page report details federal and state programs that provide assistance to the state’s poor, unemployed and disabled residents. It comes as the state’s economy continues to struggle and state agencies deal with an influx of residents seeking social services.

The report found that 46 percent of all spending in this year’s enacted state budget flows to grants and benefits for programs such as Medicaid, medical assistance programs, child care subsidies and unemployment benefits.

[United Way Report PDF after the jump.]

Ranks of R.I. uninsured grew 9% in ’08

By Ted Nesi
Providence Business News Web Editor

The number of people in Rhode Island without health insurance coverage climbed to 123,000 in 2008 from 113,000 the previous year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.

With 10,000 more people losing health insurance coverage last year, the percentage of Rhode Islanders who are uninsured rose to 11.8 percent from 10.8 percent in 2007, the agency said in its annual report on incomes, poverty and health insurance.

The percentage of Rhode Islanders with some form of private or public health insurance fell to 88.2 percent, down from a recent peak of 91.4 percent in 2006. At the start of the decade, in 2000, about 93 percent of state residents had health insurance coverage.

More in Rhode Island now living in poverty

By Paul Edward Parker

Providence Journal Staff Writer

More than 3 percent of Rhode Island’s population — some 33,000 men, women and children — fell into poverty in 2008 as the recession tightened its grip on the Ocean State, according to recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

From 2007 to 2008, Rhode Island displaced Massachusetts as the New England state with the highest poverty rate. The state also leapfrogged Maine and Vermont in the process, going from fourth-highest to highest in the six-state region.

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