If children can be targeted watch out, state employees
PeachCare, Georgia’s program for providing health-care coverage for 273,000 children of the working poor, is just one aspect of the tangle created by quickly rising health-care costs.
While the Legislature has adjourned until March 19, hoping Congress will come to the rescue and provide more money, the U.S. Senate and House are more deliberative than Georgia’s General Assembly.
No matter how much a rescue is needed, a solution will probably not be found before the General Assembly reconvenes. After all, Georgia only needs $131 million to keep the program going, and Gov. Sonny Perdue doesn’t want to expend any extra to keep the program viable.
So what are lawmakers to do? Is it in their spirit to raise eligibility levels enough to exclude more children or services from the program to make it more affordable?
Even so, the health-care issues don’t disappear. Either one of two things happen. Parents of those children will wait until a crisis to take them to a hospital’s emergency room where treatment is the most expensive. And since their children aren’t covered, the cost shifts over to hospitals and local governments.
Source: Macon Telegraph

Mega Millions jackpot up to $355 million
To celebrate the record jackpot, the drawing will be held in New York’s Times Square rather than in Atlanta, hometown of Mega Millions.
The odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 176 million, and the odds of winning one of the Mega Millions prizes are about 1 in 40, lottery officials said. There have been seven Mega Millions jackpot-winning tickets purchased in Georgia.
Source: Macon Telegraph