317 funding
by Kim Krisberg
It's too early to tell just how many families Elizabeth Frerking and her colleagues at the Saline County Health Department in Marshall, Mo., will have to turn away, but it's likely to be too many. As of Oct. 1 and due to cuts in federal immunization funding, Frerking can only administer vaccines to children with no insurance at all or those with Medicaid coverage. However, it wasn't always like that.
"Previously, any family could come here and get immunizations -- we didn't turn anybody away," Frerking, the department's vaccine coordinator, told me. "Now, we get to be the ones…