Healthy MT Kids Fully Funded in Budget!

We have something important to celebrate!!

Today on very last day of the MT session Legislators are expected to pass a compromise budget that includes full funding for the Healthy Montana Kids Program, overwhelming approved by voters last fall. The budget also restores the 3% funding increase for public education.

A lot of this is thanks to you, the voters who cared enough to contact your legislators, write letters to the editor and speak out about the importance of funding health care for kids. Without the public outcry the Healthy MT Kids program would have been cut in half and 15,000 uninsured kids would be left without access to healthcare.

In compromises there are always losses. . .

Unfortunately concessions were made in order to get Republican support for the budget.

On particularly sad loss was that funding for birth control under CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) that was added mid-session into the budget was removed in the recent budget deal. Montana is one of only 2 states that doesn’t cover birth control under CHIP (which covers young people up to the age of 19) even though, ironically, prenatal care is covered. This is a shortsighted, inexcusable policy and MWV and our partners NARAL and Planned Parenthood will be back next session to work to get this changed.

Unfortunately funding for aging services and child support enforcement were also cut back to the levels approved in the initial House budget. Read a recent Independent Record article about the deal and what was cut and what stayed.

The long and short is that it has been a tough session, especially for those Montanans most in need. The original budget had a $32 million dollar cut to state investment in Health and Human Service; the compromise budget cuts $22 million, which of course is still painful for Montana families.

We are thankful that at least Healthy MT Kids and public education were saved from the chopping block, but know that we need to do better for Montana. And of course electing people who support the issues we care about is really the first and most important step in this process. Read an article about term-limits and how they may effect upcoming election and legislative work.

Want to know more details about how it all went down? Look for the Montana Women Vote summary of how our agenda faired in the 2009 session coming early next week.