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For school districts still getting their financial footing after the Great Recession, the Medicaid changes being advanced as part of the health care overhaul are sounding familiar alarms. Administrators say programming and services even beyond those that receive funding from the state-federal health care program could be at risk should Congress follow through with plans to change the way Medicaid is distributed. They say any reduction in the estimated $4 billion schools receive in annual Medicaid reimbursements would be hard to absorb after years of reduced state funding and a weakened tax base. (Ho and Thompson, 5/15)

Samantha Bailey spends her days in a Phoenix hospital room with her 19-month-old son, Henry, waiting for a heart transplant and fretting about his health care once he gets it. Fears about health care for low income or special needs children in Arizona aren't theoretical or simply the product of an anxious mother's mind. Until last year, Arizona was the only state in the nation that wasn't enrolling children just above the poverty line into the free or low-cost Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  A recession-induced budget crunch there led to a health coverage wait list for families earning between $27,000 to $40,000 a year for a family of three. (O'Donnell and Alltucker, 5/13)

Cuts to Medicaid prescribed by the American Health Care Act could lead to a drastic reduction in services for Virginians with disabilities, policy experts and lawmakers said last week. In Virginia, 1 in every 8 residents rely on the state’s Medicaid program. That includes one-third of Virginia’s children and two-thirds of its nursing facility residents. (O'Connor and Kleiner, 5/14)

Conservative Senate Republicans are weighing faster and steeper cuts to Medicaid that could drop millions of people from coverage and mark the biggest changes to the program in its 52-year history. The plan being pushed by lawmakers such as Mike Lee (R., Utah) is likely to face resistance from centrist GOP senators who are already concerned a health-overhaul bill passed by House Republicans would leave too many people uninsured. But the push for more aggressive Medicaid cutbacks indicates that if a bill ultimately passes both chambers, it could significantly scale back the federal-state insurance program that covers 73 million low-income or disabled Americans. (Armour and Peterson, 5/14)