Panel wants aid for kids and women

CARSON CITY -- Legislative money committee members have told Nevada Human Services officials that money must be added back into budgets providing services to children from low-income families and to pregnant women.

Funding in Gov. Jim Gibbons' proposed budget would reduce money for pregnancy services to about 130 women at any one time. It will save just about $2.4 million in state general fund money over the next two fiscal years.

"This is not something we relish doing, obviously," Health Care Financing and Policy Administrator Chuck Duarte said Thursday during a joint Senate-Assembly budget subcommittee session.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said the cut "moves us back 10 years." She said the cut doesn't make sense because it will cost much more than that if just a few of those women have serious medical problems during their pregnancies because they weren't seeing a doctor.

"It's just morally reprehensible to cut off money to pregnant women," Buckley said. "I just won't do it."

Buckley said the program was a partnership with the hospitals and counties, adding, "We spend years creating it then break our promises to them."

"We don't end up saving money. Those babies are going to come whether mom has coverage or not," Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, said in agreeing with Buckley that the program has to go back on a priority list of budget cuts to restore.

Lawmakers also objected to the governor's proposed cap on Nevada Checkup, the program which funds health insurance coverage for children of the working poor. The proposal would cap the program at 25,000, just about the number now served.

Duarte said it would cost an estimated $3.2 million to remove that cap. If removed, he said the patient number could go as high as 32,500 by 2011.

Legislators also objected to the governor's decision to sweep an indigent accident fund into the state's general fund. The estimated $56 million in that fund would be used to leverage more Medicaid money. But officials and hospital operators say that could force some rural hospitals to close and would result in the lawsuits which were common before the fund was created 20 years ago.