The General Accounting Office interviewed 1,157 Medicaid recipients and uninsured women in 32 communities in 8 states to determine the timing and number of their prenatal care visits and the barriers they perceived as preventing them from obtaining care earlier or more often. According to the Institute of Medicine's Prenatal Care Index, about 63 percent of the women interviewed obtained insufficient prenatal care because they did not begin care within the first 3 months of their pregnancy or made eight or fewer visits for care. About 81 percent of a comparison group of women with private health insurance received adequate care. For the Medicaid and uninsured women, about 12.4 percent of the babies born were of low birth weight. Nationally, about 6.8 percent of births are of low weight. Three barriers to earlier and more frequent prenatal care predominated in virtually every demographic group of women: (1) lack of money to pay for care; (2) lack of transportation to the provider of care; and (3) unawareness of pregnancy. The importance of these and other barriers differed by community. Federal funds are available to assist states and communities in efforts to identify primary barriers, and develop and evaluate intervention programs. (RH)