Comments about ‘No federal bonus money for Utah's Children's Health Insurance Program for second year in a row’

Utah makes it difficult to access healthcare programs like CHIP & Medicaid. With an overly difficult Eligibility process, paperwork, reviews & documentation, Utah succeeds in limiting enrollment thus saving money while disregarding the weakest among us. Let's have fewer Eligibility workers discouraging enrollment, decrease wait times on the phones & at State offices & actually help children in Utah rather than discourage all applicants. It's very clear Utah doesn't want to help children, the disabled or the elderly even though Federal funding pays a large portion of the costs.

Nice if the program wasn't offered at all. There always will be poor with us. But private charities, churches and individuals it is there job to help out. I don't think anyone would die if it wasn't offered.

What happens with programs like that is it forcibley takes money someone else earned to pay for programs like that making the taxpayer poorer himself and is taken involuntarily. Good thing not every eligible person uses it.

Utahans really need to put their money where their mouth is. It seems like every time I turn around I read an article on DN about federal funding for this or that in Utah. Sure, Utah isn't in line for federal funding for this particular program, but the State received millions of federal funds. Yet we have all of these so called conservative voters in Utah who want to reduce federal spending. Is this one of those "reduce spending to your neighbors but not to me" things? I'd like to see a reporter do some investigation and report how many federal dollars have been sent to Utah over the last few years.

Ms Molli

from the NYT, 8/31/10 - The state receiving the least federal money per resident was Nevada, which obtained $7,148.49 per capita, followed by Utah with $7,434.65 per capita.

according to datamasher (found on a quick web search of spending per revenue dollar), Utah ranks 45th. (sorry, there was no date on that one)

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University also puts Utah as the third from the bottom in receipt of federal spending. (11/28/11 for FY 2010)

I respectfully submit that these THREE independent sources show that Utahans already ARE putting their money where their mouth is, and despite your perception, we are not receiving more than our fair share of federal money (which comes from us poor taxpayers in the first place)

Also, the feds control over 2/3 of our land area, which is therefore unavailable for property tax. I have no problem with them spending money here to compensate

"Tavenner announced nearly $300 million in CMS grant money being divvied out to 23 states, ranging from $1.3 million to CHIP in Idaho, to $28.3 million in Maryland.

Utah, however, was absent from the list for the second year in a row.

The state was unable to prepare an application to receive a CHIP bonus again this year, as "changing the system costs money," Young said."

I'd like to know why the State has not been able to have the application ready for two years?

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