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ST. LOUIS NEWS TODAY - Sunday, February 10, 2007
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Despite Difficulties, States Rise Against the Status Quo to Advance Health Care Reform
ST. LOUIS, (PRNewswire-USNewswire), February 10, 2008 - A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives program, State of the States 2008: Rising to the Challenge, outlines 2007 efforts to expand health insurance coverage and find new tools to address health care reform at the state level.
While many states made progress, key contributors to uninsurance remain unchecked and historically difficult policy questions remain unanswered.
According to the report, steady increase in the number of uninsured has been a hallmark of the last decade, precipitated by unprecedented declines in employer-based coverage.
In 2007 the trend continued and, like last year, was exacerbated when public program funding remained flat, failing yet again to offset new losses. This one-two punch hits children particularly hard, swelling the ranks of uninsured kids by 700,000 in 2006 and accounting for more than one-quarter of the growth in uninsured.
"These are extraordinarily tough questions to answer - and each leads down a different path of policy discussion. But states have shown an enormous capacity to work through different design scenarios and are determined to finding answers," said Enrique Martinez-Vidal, director of the State Coverage Initiatives program and a lead author of the report. "They don't really have a choice but to keep working on these problems. The status quo just isn't working and there isn't much hope of Federal help in the immediate future."
Overall, states' reform activities can be grouped into three general categories:
- Comprehensive reforms like those passed Massachusetts and Vermont in 2006, Maine's Dirigo plan, and new proposals that California, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico have been working on this past year;
- Substantial reforms that expand coverage, ensure private market reforms and/or launch new purchasing mechanisms, such as Washington's legislation providing access to coverage for all children by 2010, and begin a premium subsidy program for families; and
- Incremental strategies that expand health coverage for subpopulations within the uninsured, such as expansions aimed at children in Illinois, Hawaii, Missouri, and Texas; SCHIP eligibility expansions in New York; and efforts in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, and Washington that expanded coverage to young adults.
In addition, a wealth of state activities took aim at system-wide improvements in quality, care coordination, and cost containment. Increasingly, states are coupling coverage expansions with strategies that target chronic conditions, wellness and prevention, the uptake of health information technology, and public reporting of information on cost and quality. With these efforts, states are working to improve quality, control costs, and improve the value of public and private programs.
"More and more often we're seeing states attempt to address health reform with a balance of coverage expansions, quality improvement efforts and cost-containment strategies," says Martinez-Vidal. "They continue to take the lead in addressing the problems of the uninsured."
Plan to End Unfair Local Property Tax Increases for Missouri Homeowners
ST. LOUIS, (SLFP.com), February 10, 2008 - Gov. Matt Blunt is calling for greater protection for Missouri taxpayers through mandatory rollbacks for all local property taxing districts and measures to bring clarity and predictability to Missouri's local property tax system.
"Local property assessments and re-assessments should be fair, but all too often they have become a shadowy path to higher taxes," Gov. Blunt said week. "We can better protect, inform and serve Missourians with my plan for truth in taxation and mandatory levy rollbacks that benefit all Missourians."
All Missourians pay local property taxes, whether directly or through higher rent. Missouri state law is flawed because it does not require all locally elected boards to roll back the local property taxes they impose on Missourians when the combination of higher assessments and levy rates exceed the normal rate of growth. Gov. Blunt is taking action to protect taxpayers from excessive local property tax increases that are allowed through loopholes in Missouri's current local property tax system.
In Missouri and many other states, local governments impose local property tax on residential, agricultural and business owners to fund important services such as education, public safety and local infrastructure, but Missouri's local property tax system has become a complicated, confusing, and sometimes unexpectedly expensive burden. Governments should not become flush with cash through flaws in the law while many Missouri homeowners and tenants scrape by, sometimes being forced to give up their homes or businesses because of these costs.
"In the Senate, we've moved a step closer to protecting Missouri taxpayers in future reassessment years from back door tax increases under the veil of reassessment," Senate Leader Mike Gibbons said. "The Senate Ways and Means Committee unanimously approved our property tax reform measure, Senate Bill 711, that will also close tax increase loopholes, require earlier notice and more information, and expand tax relief for low income seniors and the disabled."
Gov. Blunt also is calling for greater clarity and predictability in Missouri's local property tax system. Currently, collectors are under no obligation to send tax bills out any earlier than 30 days before they are due. The governor supports a system in which taxpayers are made aware of how any local property tax increases will affect them through an estimated tax bill in the spring of reassessment years. The governor's plan will give Missourians more time to plan to pay their local property taxes each year, discuss rates and government needs with their local officials, and consider possible appeals of their assessment.
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