The House is taking up the Health & Welfare budget, HB 341, a huge and complicated budget that includes the Medicaid program. Overall, it totals $564.8 million in state general funds next year, a 29.5 percent increase, but that's largely because of a drop in the federal matching rate for Medicaid, which is forcing the state to pay more of the bill for those services. In total funds, the budget comes to $2.2 billion, up 11.8 percent from this year; increased caseload is among the factors driving overall growth, despite $35 million in cuts to state Medicaid funding and services that lawmakers approved in separate legislation, HB 260; those cuts are reflected in the budget.