The Affordable Care Act allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plan until age 26.   Before the President signed this landmark Act into law, many health plans and issuers could and did in fact remove young adults from their parents’ policies because of their age, leaving many college graduates and others with no insurance.

State lawmakers kept the state’s 30 Healthy Start Coalitions intact, but cut $4.7 million in service funding for the program. The final 2010 budget reduced general revenue funding for Healthy Start services for at-risk pregnant women and newborns by $2 million. Loss of these funds prevents the state from drawing down an addition $2.7 million in federal funding.

Maternal and child health care advocates, providers, and families struggled for months to save the network of proven health, prevention and early intervention programs throughout the long and labor intense 2010 Legislative Session. 

Providing health care coverage for low income pregnant women and children gives families security while providing relief to the strain on shrinking state revenues.

Future funding for Florida’s Healthy Start Coalitions and expanded Medicaid coverage for pregnant women is now up to the budget conference committee.

Despite level funding in the Governor’s budget, state maternal and child health advocates are bracing for a tough legislative session as state lawmakers grapple with significantly lower revenue projections.

For the second consecutive year, Florida has received a failing grade on the prematurity report card released annually by the March of Dimes.