The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities today pointed out a new study from Arkansas’ Department of Human Services, which found the expansion of Medicaid in health reform would save the state $350 million between 2014 and 2025. This stands in stark contrast to an earlier estimate from the state that participation in the reform law would cost it over $800 million over roughly the same period.

Arkansas’ new estimate does fall in line with a recent Urban Institute study which offered an optimistic prediction of $362 million in savings for the state between 2014 and 2019, and a pessimistic prediction of $7 million in new costs. As the new Arkansas study covered a ten-year period from the same start date, it would seem to fall right down the middle of the Urban Institute’s estimates. Critics of health care reform’s Medicaid expansion — as well as governors in both parties — have pointed to concerns about budgetary effects as a justification for states to opt out of the expansion.

Nor is Arkansas the only state to walk back initial estimates of how much the expansion would cost. After Texas Governor Rick Perry declared his state would sit out the expansion, Texas’ health and human services commissioner downgraded the state’s estimate from $27 billion over ten years to $16 billion. That remains well high of the Urban Institute’s pessimistic estimate of $2.4 billion over five years, and certainly high of its optimistic estimate of $554 million in savings.

The expansion of Medicaid in health reform would cover almost 16 million currently uninsured Americans. Almost 4 million of those Americans reside in the six states that have already said they won’t participate.

Gay federal employees will be allowed to cover their same-sex partners’ children under the federal health insurance plan after a proposed regulation from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is enacted. According to the Washington Blade, “children will be eligible for coverage if a parent is in a domestic same-sex relationship with a federal employee who receives coverage through federal programs,” and the children could receive coverage even if they had not been legally adopted by the federal employee:

Right now, federal employees can obtain coverage for the children of their same-sex partners if he or she adopts their partner’s children. But adoption isn’t available to same-sex couples everywhere: only in 18 states and D.C. is second-parent adoption available statewide.

Brian Moulton, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, said the proposed rule change is important because of this limited availability of second-parent adoption.

“In the absence of fair adoption laws, thousands of same-sex parents across the country remain legal strangers to the children they have raised from birth,” Moulton said. “By issuing this proposed rule, OPM will ensure that fewer children of federal workers will be denied health care coverage simply because their parents are a same-sex couple.”

OPM offered recommendations about additional benefits that could be provided to partners of gay federal employees after President Obama extended limited benefits to same-sex partners. But since Obama’s June 2010 memo based on the recommendations, OPM determined that “stepchild” in the U.S. code related to federal employees could include a child of an employee’s same-sex partner. The proposed regulation expanding coverage is needed to implement Obama’s memo and “is consistent with OPM’s policy determination that extension of coverage is appropriate,” according to the rule.

The Senate has taken steps to pass the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligation Act, which would extend health insurance and other workplace benefits to federal employees and their same-sex partners. But while that legislation is stalled, this proposed regulation is a good step in the right direction.

Texas has the worst health care in the nation, with more 25 percent of Texans – 6.2 million people – uninsured. And last month, Texas became the largest state whose governor has committed to turning down the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid funds or establish a health insurance exchange. According to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress, Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s decision is especially harmful to Latinos, who make up 18.7 percent of Texas’s population.

A full 38 percent of the nonelderly Latino population in Texas is uninsured, compared to 17 percent of white Texans and 26 percent of Texans of color. Austin’s Center for Public Policy Priorities found that expanding Medicaid would immediately insure 2 million Texans, and this would provide health care to hundreds of thousands of Latinos and address health problems particularly harmful to Latinos.

Latinos are significantly less likely to receive preventative care than other groups. Latinos are also more likely to have chronic diseases such as diabetes. Latino women contract cervical cancer at twice the rate of white women, further highlighting the need for better preventative care in the Latino community.

With billions in newly available Medicaid funds making health insurance affordable for people who couldn’t previously afford it, Latinos would be much more likely to receive the preventative care they need to have healthy lives. The Department of Health and Human Services predicts that, if adopted, the Affordable Care Act will “significantly improve health outcomes for Latinos.”

Unless Perry changes his mind drastically, Texas Latinos are unlikely to have the opportunity to take full advantage of the Affordable Care Act. Perry joins Republican governors across the country in taking a political stance against Obamacare, turning down $258 billion in federal health dollars and leaving 9.2 million Americans uninsured in the process.

– Ben Sherman