• Medicaid needs are placing a huge financial strain on individual states.

Here in Gwinnett County, an Atlanta suburb that is home to a growing immigrant population, Medicaid enrollment ballooned by 26 percent from July 2007 to July 2008, according to state officials. One day last fall, the waiting area in the office of the county’s Department of Family and Children Services was so packed with applicants that the fire marshal insisted that another room be opened for overflow.

“There’s just been a steady increase in the numbers, and it has followed the economy,” said Glenda G. McMillan, the regional director over the Gwinnett County office. “And there’s no one population. We’re seeing the newly unemployed, the underemployed. There’s just an array of need out there.”

• Report: The FDA may be ineffective in adequately protecting the health of the public.
• WSJ Blog: Where should money to enhance primary care come from?
• What’s Kentucky now famous for? Why, it leads the nation in death rates attributable to smoking.
• In case you haven’t heard, there’s an influenza vaccine surplus. Take advantage.

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