2011
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Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Puts State on Path to Universal Coverage
By Donna Sutton Fay, Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security Education Fund Vermont has been successful in incrementally expanding its public health insurance programs for the past twenty-five years. Subsidized coverage is available to children and uninsured adults with incomes up to 300% of the FPL. We have one of the lowest rates of uninsured…
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Arkansas Lawmakers Ensure Kids Keep Coverage as Private Plans Leave the State
By Elisabeth Wright Burak, Arkansas Advocates The legislative session in Arkansas ended last month with many accomplishments for kids’ health on the books. We spend a lot of time talking about measures to improve access to ARKids First and promising new oral health accomplishments, including better availability of fluoridated water and preventive dental services. …
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Rhode Island Waiver – Model or Sweetheart Deal?
Proponents of block granting Medicaid have been pointing to Rhode Island’s Section 1115 research and demonstration waiver that includes a global cap on federal spending as evidence of the success of this approach. But as an article that appears in yesterday’s New York Times underscores, this analogy is just another example of the “fact free”…
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Health Subcommittee Passes Repeal of Medicaid/CHIP Stability Protections (MoE)
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health took the first step toward unraveling the remarkable success our nation has achieved in connecting kids with coverage and driving uninsurance rates for children down to a historic low. Today the Subcommittee approved “The State Flexibility Act” (H.R. 1683), a bill introduced by Representative Gingrey (R-GA) that…
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CBO Says: Half of States Likely to Eliminate CHIP if MoE is Repealed
By Jocelyn Guyer On the eve of today’s mark up in the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, CBO released a more detailed cost estimate of H.R. 1683, the bill to repeal the Medicaid and CHIP stability protections (aka, “maintenace-of-effort requirements”). It highlights that the debate over the future of the stability protections is…
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You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure
By Joe Touschner We’ve all heard the observation that putting a Medicaid or CHIP card in a parent’s hand doesn’t necessarily mean that a child will get all the health care he or she needs–many of us have probably said it ourselves. For coverage to translate to care, kids and parents need access to the…
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Keeping Up with the California Health Benefit Exchange Board: Starting Off On the Fast Track
By Nicette Short of Children Now and Kathleen Hamilton of The Children’s Partnership California’s Health Benefit Exchange Board, created under the Affordable Care Act, held its inaugural meeting on April 20, 2011 in Sacramento, California. Even with one of the five Board seats vacant (the California Senate has not yet selected its appointee), the California…
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Presumptive Eligibility Connects Kids (and Others) to Coverage
Over most of the two decades I’ve been working on children’s coverage, it was generally believed that sustaining an uninsurance rate among children of less than 5% was unlikely. Several states came close, hovering just above or below 5%, but still, the notion lingered. That is, until Massachusetts solidly broke the 5% barrier and can…
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Mississippi’s Interview Requirement Reduces Government Efficiency & Disconnects People from Coverage
By Wesley Prater Born and raised in Mississippi, I’ve always heard that Mississippians are “first in the worst” and “last in the best.” Unfortunately, Mississippi’s enrollment and renewal practices for children in Medicaid and CHIP put us in the running for worst in the government efficiency competition and reinforce those views about my home state. …
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Legislative Week in Review
There are a lot of bad ideas floating around Congress that could harm children and families who rely upon Medicaid or CHIP to meet their health care needs. Here are the highlights of what happened on the hill this week on various proposals that would undermine the stability of Medicaid and CHIP coverage. Senate Finance…
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Oklahoma Makes U-Turn and Rejects Early Innovator Grant
By David Blatt, Director of Oklahoma Policy Institute In the new national health care law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), exchanges are state-level competitive marketplaces for individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance. After winning a $54 million Early Innovator grant earlier this year, Oklahoma was poised to become a national leader with a…
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CMS Asks Florida ‘Where’s the Beef’? (Do States Need a Waiver to do Managed Care?)
Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent a letter to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration in response to the state’s request for waiver authority to expand managed care statewide. CMS responded by saying that their Medicaid waiver extension request cannot be granted because it lacks a specific plan. The state’s…
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Presumptive Eligibility: Providing Access to Health Care Without Delay and Connecting Children to Coverage
Presumptive eligibility is a state policy option that gives states the flexibility to train health care providers, schools and other community-based organizations and programs to screen eligibility and temporarily enroll eligible persons in Medicaid and CHIP. Currently 31 states use presumptive eligibility for pregnant women and 16 states enroll children presumptively. The following issue brief…
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Senator Hatch Launches Effort to Repeal MoE: Could Lead to Deep Cuts in CHIP
By Jocelyn Guyer Yesterday, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced a bill to repeal the Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) stability protections or “maintenance-of-effort requirements.” In the House, the same legislation was introduced by Phil Gingrey (R-GA). Although Senator Hatch had warned for a long time this bill would be coming, it is still…
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Groups Develop Public Comments on Section 1332 Innovation Waiver Regs (aka Wyden Waivers)
A working group consisting of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Georgetown CCF, Families USA, and NHelp, with input from the National Women’s Law Center, NCQA and SEIU have produced comments on the proposed Section 1332 State Innovation waiver public process regulations issued by CMS on March 14, 2011. Take a look at the…
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Alphabet Soup: ACOs under ACA
By Joe Touschner We’ve long been familiar with CHIP and FMAP, while health reform has given us PPACA (ACA for short) and CLASS. You’ve probably also heard a lot recently about ACOs–Accountable Care Organizations which may be the concept of the year for many of our friends in the physician, hospital, and insurance communities. (Atul…
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Colorado Takes Step to Eliminate ‘Stair Step’
By Gretchen Hammer, Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved Some people say stair stepping is good for your health. Well, that may be true when you are exercising, but it is not true for families with children enrolled in public health insurance programs in Colorado. Currently, a Colorado family can have kids on two different…
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HHS Engages Communities to Address Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
HHS’s National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (a project of the Office of Minority Health) recently hosted a conference call announcing a new new initiative focused on reducing health disparities in the U.S. The National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity was developed after engaging communities across the country around the priorities and…
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CMS Continues to Invest in and Support Innovation and State Flexibility in Medicaid
Regardless of who pays for health care services, the U.S. health care system is in desperate need of dramatic change to make it the best it can be – affordable, sustainable and focused on outcomes – without leaving millions of Americans, mostly low-income or those with existing health conditions, uninsured. The good news is that…
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Kansas Eliminates Backlog with Commonsense Solutions to Improve Efficiency
By Suzanne Wikle, Kansas Action for Children Lately it seems hard to find good news about Medicaid, but here in the heartland we have some truly wonderful news about our Medicaid and CHIP program, collectively known as HealthWave. As of late March, an enrollment backlog that topped 30,000 applications at one time, has been eliminated…