Since "out of control" Medicaid spending seems to get so much attention I thought it would be good to draw attention to the December issue of Budget Footnotes published by the Ohio Legislative Services Commission. They found that as Ohio completed month five of state fiscal year 2006, state Medicaid spending was 3 percent below estimates or $133.8 million less than budgeted. The biggest factor in the under spending is that caseload for the managed care covered families and children program are almost 80,000 below projections. Many advocates argued during the budget process that state caseload projections were too high and that it was unnecessary to remove over 25,000 working parents from the program. At least at for the time being, an barring any unforeseen downturn in the economy, it appears that the advocates were right. Of course that's a small comfort to those hard working parents who are losing their health care coverage.