Opinion: Maybe the Dumbest Cut of All

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The House budget that could be approved in the next two weeks would cut more than a billion dollars in health and human services spending over the next two years, more than $710 million of it from Medicaid. That's a bad idea for several reasons.
The deep reductions in Medicaid funding means fewer services for people who need them, lower reimbursements for the medical professionals who provide them, and a loss to the state of more than $2 billion in federal Medicaid funding, since the federal government matches state Medicaid expenditures 2 to 1.

Cruel Cuts May Uproot Men From Home

GASTONIA, N.C. -- After years of battling the developmental disabilities they were born with, Eric Falls and Clint McManus have found a measure of ease in the local group home they have shared since 2004.
The quiet, stable environment with round-the-clock attention has done for the men what previous years spent living in state institutions could not. And yet a complex state funding issue may soon force them to move back into a more crowded special needs facility, despite the fact that taxpayers could end up spending more for the men’s care if that happens.