Month: March 2011

Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal to eliminate all state funding for family planning services for low-income residents could also jeopardize federal dollars for pregnancy prevention. In the last two years, the state has spent $1.9 million annually on federal planning services at centers around the state. This past year, the state also distributed $1.5 million in federal family planning dollars. This federal funding is part of the $10.7 million received by the state through the federal Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, commonly referred to as the Title V program. The federal planning dollars require a state match, but it is unclear how the state would meet that requirement given the elimination of its own funding for family planning. (CAPITAL TIMES, 3/8)

At least 45 registered sex offenders live among other nursing home residents, according to a Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism review of addresses for the state's nearly 20,000 registered sex offenders and 399 licensed nursing homes. But unlike many other sex offenders, most of those in nursing homes live unnoticed by their neighbors: State and federal laws don't require background checks of residents or notification to the vulnerable people who live, work and visit with them. (JANESVILLE GAZETTE, 3/8)

As baby boomers fuel a historic surge in the older-than-65 demographic, state health officials fear that as many as one in three could develop Alzheimer's. The incurable brain disease causing dementia afflicts more than 100,000 people in Wisconsin. (GREEN BAY PRESS GAZETTE, 3/7)

The older-than-65 population in Brown County in the next 25 years is expected to double, and that has health care providers worried that those numbers could overwhelm an already stressed system. According to state health officials, the older-than-65 population in Brown County in the next 25 years will go from 28,757 people to 57,645. Statewide, the senior boom is expected to result in 1.4 million Wisconsin residents of retirement age, up from about 800,000 today. (GREEN BAY PRESS GAZETTE, 3/7)

Gov. Scott Walker's budget calls for moving sexual predators from the Wisconsin Resource Center to another state facility and replacing them with female inmates requiring mental health treatment. The 2011-13 biennium budget calls for the 80 sexual offenders at WRC to be relocated to Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center in Mauston, where the majority of the state's offenders are already being treated, said Department of Health Services Communications Director Seth Boffeli. (OSHKOSH NORTHWESTERN, 3/7)

Florida federal judge Roger Vinson on Thursday issued a stay of his earlier ruling that the health care law was unconstitutional. He criticized the Obama administration, however, for dragging its feet and said that unless an appeal is filed in seven days states can consider the law invalid. Wisconsin is among 26 states that are part of the suit. (WHN, 3/4)