The federal government will cut the state's Medicare prescription drug bill by $152 million, according to Gov. Bev Perdue.
The $152 million is the state's share of the $4.3 billion in temporary Medicare cost cuts announced last week.
Under a federal law passed in 2003, the states help pay Medicare prescription drug costs for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. The states' shares of those costs are called clawback payments.
As she announced the reductions, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the money the states save can be used to help pay for Medicaid.
Medicaid is the fastest-growing part of the state budget, according to a recent study.
According to the federal government's calculations, the state will pay $400.6 million in clawback payments instead of $552.9million.
The reductions will apply to the period from Oct. 1, 2008, to the end of this year. The money to cover the cost is coming from the federal stimulus package.
The state's Medicaid budget was on track to be $250 million in the red by the end of the year.
Child care subsidy gap
The state spent $29 million more on child care subsidies for low-income families in 2009 than in 2005 yet served 7,795 fewer children, according to county social service directors.
County administrators used those numbers to make their pitch for distributing all government child care money through social services offices, rather than splitting off some for local Smart Start offices to hand out.
The social services directors said limiting the bureaucracy would free up more money for child care at a time when the number of parents waiting for help has hit a historic high.
The directors made their case recently to a legislative task force considering consolidation of early childhood education programs.
Task force members didn't like the suggestion to cut Smart Start out of the child care money loop.
Opposing the social services directors, the N.C. Child Care Coalition wrote that there's no evidence that having two ways to distribute child care subsidies wastes money.
The Child Care Coalition also disagreed with the directors' numbers, putting the decline in children served at 6,859.
Legislators talked last session about merging Smart Start and More at Four to save money but didn't do it.
"Costs increase; the waiting list grows," said Glenn Osborne, director of the Wilson County social services department.
"Children simply don't have access to child care," he said. "In less than two years, we can have a waiting list of over 50,000. We simply believe this is unacceptable."
Calabria decides to run
N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Ann Marie Calabria has decided she doesn't want to hang up the black robe after all.
Calabria announced in September that she wouldn't run for re-election, but this month she showed up on the State Board of Elections' list of candidates.
She said Friday that when she announced last fall that she would step down, her 88-year-old mother was struggling with health problems.
"I thought, 'I could not start running an election, be going all over the state, until I know she's OK,'" Calabria said.
Her mother has since moved to a continuing care facility and is doing great, Calabria said.
Calabria also said her involvement in juvenile literacy and delinquency-prevention efforts rekindled her desire to run.
She now faces two opponents: Mark Klass, the senior resident superior court judge in Davidson County, and Jane Gray, a district court judge in Wake County.
By staff writers Lynn Bonner and Mark Johnson
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