Question: What came first, the budget or the verdict?
And doesn't this asthma thing tie in beautifully with that very popular movie, a nice little tug on your health care anxiety, As Good As It Gets.
That's a subtle synergy. Such a waste of talent.
Clinton Targets Childhood Asthma
Associated Press Thursday, January 28, 1999; Page A14
President Clinton will ask Congress for $68 million to attack childhood asthma and $40 million to subsidize the training of pediatricians by children's hospitals, according to the White House.
Both initiatives will be included in the proposed fiscal 2000 federal budget Clinton will submit next week, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The asthma plan, to be announced today at the White House, was billed as the "first-ever comprehensive, administration-wide strategy" to fight the disease. Most of the money -- $50 million -- would be used for competitive state grants to identify and treat poor children who have asthma and are served by Medicaid.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to unveil the proposed new subsidies for training pediatricians in a speech at the National Press Club.
The government helps pay for the training doctors receive by reimbursing hospitals through the Medicare program for the elderly. But that system is based on the number of Medicare patients a hospital sees, creating a disadvantage for hospitals that mainly treat children.
Children's hospitals lose money each year, more so than other teaching hospitals partly because of this inequity, the administration contends. The $40 million would come through an existing grant program and would amount to about $9,380 per resident. The average hospital would receive $689,000.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
Clinton Proposes $280 Million In Aid for Former Foster Children By Barbara Vobejda Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 29, 1999; Page A02
President Clinton has included $280 million in his next federal budget to help teenagers who are pushed out of the nation's foster care system simply because they hit their 18th birthday.
The program, to be announced today by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, would fund state programs that work with teenagers as they leave foster care by providing training, health insurance, limited financial help and housing to help them live on their own.
Roughly 20,000 children are moved out of foster care each year at age 18, often without families or relatives to provide a home or financial support. While a fraction remain with foster families, most must fend for themselves because the state and federal funding that has supported them ends by law when they turn 18.
That means they must find a job and a place to live, sometimes before they have finished high school.
"We need to do much more to help young people who have spent their whole lives in foster care make it on their own," said Bruce Reed, White House domestic policy adviser.
A Washington Post report last year drew attention to the plight of these young people, a quarter of whom spend at least some time homeless after they are "emancipated" from the foster system, the bureaucratic label for the process. Studies by University of Wisconsin researcher Mark Courtney found that 12 to 18 months after they left foster care, just half of the ex-foster children were employed, one-third were on welfare, one-fifth of the girls had given birth and more than one-quarter of the boys had been imprisoned.
"We're very pleased the president has supported this underserved population," said Robin Nixon, director of youth services for the Child Welfare League of America. She said her organization and others would push for even broader legislation -- extending the foster care entitlement to age 21, a change that would cost $500 million over five years.
But while congressional Republicans had signaled their support for the president's initiative, she said, it would be more difficult to secure approval for extending an entitlement, which guarantees funding to any eligible child.
The president's proposal would increase federal spending for the first time since 1992 for the Independent Living Program, a state-run program that encourages young people to finish high school and get training and teaches them how to budget, find apartments and plan for careers. That effort would receive $175 million over five years.
The budget also includes $50 million over four years to provide financial support for housing and other needs while the youths finish education or training they need to find jobs. It adds $50 million over five years to allow former foster children to receive Medicaid until they are 21.
And it includes $25 million over five years to provide housing and training to homeless adolescents between the ages of 16 to 21.
Congress created the Independent Living Program in 1986 after researchers noticed that many of the nation's homeless were former foster children. The funding for that program now stands at $70 million a year, a figure that was based on the foster care population in the mid-1980s. Since then, the number of children in the system has more than doubled, to about 500,000.
In some states, the programs amount to short seminars on how to budget and find a job. In other programs, young people are placed in subsidized apartments and given job training and entry-level work.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company