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"Research from Rice University academics Todd Risley and Betty Hart found that, by age 3, children from low-income families hear, on average, 30 million fewer words than their peers growing up in more affluent homes. This word gap - and related social and emotional skill deficits - become the achievement gap when children born into poverty enter kindergarten at a severe disadvantage and never catch up. Substandard urban K-12 public education perpetuates this tragedy, increasing the risk of dropping out - the surest way to ensure that a child fails to join society's mainstream as an adult."

"With elite colleges under growing pressure to enroll more low-income students, the University of Chicago is taking a series of rare steps to make applying faster, simpler and cheaper, and to make studying there more affordable. The package of measures, to be announced Wednesday, includes several that are highly unusual, like eliminating the expectation that low- and middle-income students take jobs during the academic year, guaranteeing them paid summer internships after their first year in college and providing them career counseling beginning in that first year."

"Gov. Gary Herbert isn't ready yet to announce a final deal has been reached with the federal government on his Healthy Utah alternative to Medicaid expansion, even though he's holding his annual health summit today. The governor will only be able to provide an update on the ongoing negotiations with the Obama administration in his opening address today to the fourth annual gathering to discuss health care reform."

"When Gov. John Kasich bucked his party to accept the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in Ohio, the fight wasn't over. In a fraught political maneuver in 2013, the Ohio Controlling Board voted to accept about $2.6 billion from the federal government over 18 months to expand eligibility to low-income single adults and more parents."

"A year ago, hospitals worried that they'd lose money and have to cut staff or expenses because of the Affordable Care Act. The full results are not in yet, but in some areas, hospitals report seeing gains, not losses. For President Barack Obama's administration, these gains, largely from hospitals seeing more patients who have health insurance, are part of the ACA's good-news story."

"Under the program, nonprofit organizations can collect donations from businesses to fund scholarships that would move low-income children from public schools with low test scores to private schools. The businesses would receive a tax credit that subtracts 70 percent of the amount they donated off their bill for state corporate income tax, privilege tax (for financial institutions) or premium tax (for insurance companies)."

"Enrollment in Medicaid is surging as a result of the Affordable Care Act, but the Obama administration and state officials have done little to ensure that new beneficiaries have access to doctors after they get their Medicaid cards, federal investigators say in a new report. The report, to be issued this week by the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, says state standards for access to care vary widely and are rarely enforced. As a result, it says, Medicaid patients often find that they must wait for months or travel long distances to see a doctor."

"Medicaid-focused managed-care firm Centene is having its moment as states turn over Medicaid patients to managed-care firms. St. Louis-based Centene has been expanding in Florida and Mississippi, and may get a lot bigger in Illinois next year. It already gets a big slice of Medicaid business from Texas. And Texas will likely hand over more business to Centene next year for a new pilot program for low-income "dual eligibles" -- those on Medicare and Medicaid."

"Six years after auditors discovered signs that some Texas orthodontists were putting unneeded braces on teeth of the state's poorest children, an army of lawyers is battling over who is liable for one of the biggest instances of Medicaid abuse in recent history. The state's estimate for how much was spent between 2007 and 2012 on Medicaid dental and orthodontic services that were medically unnecessary, improperly documented or not provided at all has climbed to $823 million."

"According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 128,531 Montanans were in the SNAP program last year. A family of two must earn less than 11,293 monthly to qualify. There's no comprehensive data to show how many college students struggle with food insecurity. An increasing body of anecdotal and numeric evidence, however, suggests that it is becoming a more pressing problem. A study conducted by Oregon State University researchers in 2011 found 59 percent of OSU students interviewed went hungry at some point the year prior."

"Texas taxpayers and hospitals pay a steep price for the state's refusal to expand Medicaid, top White House officials said Wednesday, citing fresh cost projections for treating the uninsured.Hospitals nationwide will see uncompensated care drop $5.7 billion this year, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report. Three-fourths of that savings will go to the states that expanded Medicaid."

"Perhaps the saddest result of poverty is how it affects children, a situation spotlighted in the recent News article showing that more than half of Buffalo's children live in poverty. It is disturbing to think that many of these children face a lifelong struggle just to get by. There is no single solution to poverty. But there are paths that can break the cycle of poverty. These include Buffalo Promise Neighborhood, Say Yes to Education and the Buffalo Arts and Technology Center, which will train the unemployed and underemployed in skills geared toward jobs at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus."