Spending next year from the state General Fund for non-education agencies would drop about $345 million, 19.9 percent, from this year's expected spending.

The current special session ends Tuesday. If the supplemental budget is not passed before then, a new special session will be necessary.

Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee are searching for ways to avoid funding cuts for both higher education and health care services for the blind as they started work on next year's $24 billion budget.

The study estimates that the state pays on average $13,972 to provide health benefits for a state employee compared with an average of $11,539 for the five states in the area.

As the state Senate prepares to come up with its version of the state budget, Governor Nixon wants to add another $68 million to the pot.

After legislators increased the estimate of how much money the state will have available, Bryant revised his budget to include cuts of 1.7 percent for most agencies, down from his initial plan of 5.5 percent cuts.

"Most people say, big deal, you're supposed to get it done on time, but it's actually a big deal in Albany," said Gov. Cuomo.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York Legislature are poised to pass a state budget on time for the second year in a row. Just seven spending plans were approved on time since 1975.

To help clear up the many misconceptions about the arguments, State Budget Solutions put together a helpful Q&A, aimed at informing the interested non-lawyers (and quite possibly the lawyers as well) about the issues before the Court. 

The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact - which is really just "an agreement between two or more states that is consented to by Congress" - that would return the authority and the responsibility to regulate health care back to the member states.

In the wake of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, states face complex decisions con cerning whether to expand Medicaid coverage as specified in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With the federal government no longer able to coerce expansion, states must base their decisions on subjective value judgments that will vary from state to state, incorporating each state's unique budgetary circumstances, the needs of its uninsured population, and the incentives established by interactions between the ACA's provisions. A first important consideration is that states face substantial near-term Medicaid cost increases irrespective of coverage expansion decisions.

Was the slow recovery of the U.S. economy from the trough of the Great Recession anticipated? 

Alternative views on the problem the United States is facing: financing retirement consumption as its population ages.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), signed into law on March 23, 2010, made significant changes to the way eligibility for the Medicaid program will be determined and who the program will cover. State governments will play a key role in implementing many aspects of this reform, which must be in place by the beginning of 2014. States will need to address the financial implications of implementing this Medicaid expansion and accompanying enrollment systems.

State finances are not transparent and often include hidden liabilities as well as rapidly growing responsibilities which are difficult to control.  While state revenues are gradually recovering from the drastic decline of the Great Recession, they are not growing sufficiently to keep pace with the spending required by Medicaid costs, pensions, and other responsibilities and obligations.  This has resulted in persistent and growing structural deficits in many states which threaten their fiscal sustainability.

A map and chart ranking Medicaid spending for each of the 50 states in FY2010.

In the long term, the decline in the sector's operating balance is primarily driven by the rising health-related costs of state and local expenditures on Medicaid and the cost of health care compensation for state and local government employees and retirees.

Among the 50 state employee health benefit plans, there is considerable variation in premium rates and in how the costs are shared between the state and employee.The average premium for a standard family policy was $1,377.03, with the state paying an average of $1,096.63 (80 percent) and the employee paying the remainder. (Based on 42 states.) The average premium rate for the lowest cost family insurance option was $1,101.28, with the state paying an average of $974.66 (88 percent).

An examination of Medicaid spending by state over a decade.  In 2009, the 10 states where per capita spending was highest ranged from 13 to 36 percent higher than the national average, and the 10 states where per capita spending was lowest ranged from 8 to 26 percent below the national average.

The sixth-annual Tennessee Pork Report is chock-full yet again, of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of taxpayer money by state and local government officials. Despite a changing political landscape in Tennessee, wasteful government spending has not disappeared.

Three Things to Fix Health Care Now:

#1: Reject the Health Insurance Exchange
#2: Don't Expand Medicaid
#3: Offer an Alternative

This paper examines the ongoing fiscal crisis caused by health-care plans for retirees (known as "other post-employment benefits," or OPEB) in one of the hardest-hit states, California, and outlines necessary reforms that should come before tax increases or cuts to government services.

Supporters of Obamacare claim that expanding Medicaid will entail little to no cost to state governments, since the federal government will fund the vast majority of the additional costs. Indeed, some analyses project states achieving savings from adopting the expansion. However, state lawmakers should be wary of accepting such analyses at face value.

Block-granting Medicaid is the best way to deliver better, cost-effective care to the most vulnerable Americans.

With some reasonable reforms to the program to make the State Health Plan benefits more closely aligned with those offered in the private sector and other state governments, however, the state can put the State Health Plan back onto a sustainable path.

Any serious attempt at state budget reform in North Carolina must include an examination of its Medicaid program. Costs have been soaring, and past cost-containment efforts have proven both insufficient and detrimental to enrollees' access to care. Moreover, Medicaid enrollees are merely passive participants in the program with little or no choices, and at the mercy of the whims of politicians.

During its five years of operations, Florida's Medicaid Reform Pilot has improved the health of enrolled patients, achieved high patient satisfaction, and kept cost increases below average, saving Florida up to $118 million annually.

Medicaid services not required by the federal government but approved by the state legislature in years past cost North Carolin $4.4 billion in 2010-2011. That accounted for 46 percent of the state's $10 billion Medicaid budget.

To better understand best practices in Medicaid reform, we explore five recent state-level Medicaid reforms and their ability to simultaneously reduce costs, maintain or increase access, and survive the politics of reform.

The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact - which is really just "an agreement between two or more states that is consented to by Congress" - that would return the authority and the responsibility to regulate health care back to the member states.