NO local family will be affected by the July 1 phase out of the federal welfare program that gives out cash assistance to indigent families, according to Health Secretary James U. Hofschneider.
Hofschneider said the commonwealth was not included in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
On Guam, at least 400 families will no longer get federal assistance under this program by the end of the month.
The CNMI, meanwhile, continues to see an increase in the number of indigent families.
Assistant Attorney General Nancy Gottfried, legal counsel of the Department of Public Health, said the U.S. welfare programs applicable to the CNMI are food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid and the Medically Indigent Assistance Program.
“To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program here,” said Gottfried.
James Kintol, director of the Nutrition Assistance Program, reported a 19 percent increase in the number of household recipients of food stamps.
From 1,691 households in March 2001, the figure climbed to 2,018 in March 2002.
Kintol said work hour reductions and unemployment were major contributing factors to the increase.
Medicaid recipients also increased by 27 percent, or from 6,253 in fiscal year 2000 to 7,962 in FY 2001, according to Helen Sablan, director of the Medicaid Office in the CNMI.
Pete Untalan of Public Health said the number of Medicaid recipients is expected to further increase in FY 2002 with the lifting of some policy restrictions.
Since Nov. 2001, Medicaid is no longer counting “ancestral lands” as part of a household’s resources or properties in computing its assets for benefits.
The CNMI gets a low level of federal funding for Medicaid, which is a federal and state program that helps pay the medical costs of people with low income and limited resources.
Sablan said in FY 2001, the local Medicaid program’s actual expenditure reached $10.7 million, but the federal government capped its budget for FY 2001 to only $2.01 million.
This means that the federal government funded only 19 percent of the actual Medicaid costs in the CNMI.
The Medically Indigent Assistance Program benefited 638 recipients from Feb. 5 to Sept. 30, 2001.
Its recipients are indigent individuals who do not have health insurance coverage and do not qualify for Medicaid due to certain restrictions, including citizenship.
The U.S. Census Bureau, in a data released in February, said the CNMI’s population and housing profile showed that 46 percent, or 31,664 individuals out of its 69,221 total population, live below the poverty level in 1999.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program was created in 1996 with the enactment of the Welfare Reform Act. The program was previously named Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which was also never extended to the CNMI.
The program served low-income families, primarily those with a single parent.
The Welfare Reform Act placed a limit on cash assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program.
The recipients were given a five-year limit which began in July 1997.
