Resources
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Samantha Garvey Helps Shed Light on the Plight of the 1 in 45 Children who are Homeless
By: Tara Mancini and Joan Alker Editor’s Note: Like so many others, we were touched by the story of Samantha Garvey, an inspirational homeless student from New York who is a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search competition. She was invited to attend President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight as the guest…
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Secrets to Success: Four States at the Forefront of Children’s Health Coverage Gains
By Jocelyn Guyer There are people in my family who think I am unduly obsessed with Tom Brady. They might even accuse me of co-authoring a paper on states at the forefront of covering our nation’s children that features Massachusetts just so I could say “Just as Tom Brady is in a league of his…
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Foster Kids Need Services, Not More Prescriptions
By Laura Boyd, Foster Family-Based Treatment Association New light has been shed recently on the plight of foster youth and too limited application of individualized, clinically assessed psychosocial treatment protocols for these vulnerable youth. While the national child advocacy community and certain leaders on Capitol Hill have been concerned about the over-prescribing and/or inappropriate prescribing…
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Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2011-2012
Amid ongoing state budget pressures, a requirement in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that states maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP was central in preserving coverage during 2011. In addition, more than half of states (29) made improvements in their programs. Most of these improvements involved greater use of technology to boost program efficiency and…
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Medicaid and CHIP – Performing Under Pressure
By Martha Heberlein and Tricia Brooks For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting (and you can count us, too!) the release of the annual survey on Medicaid and CHIP, today is your lucky day. In partnership with the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, we released “Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of…
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Secrets to Success: An Analysis of Four States at the Forefront of the Nation’s Gains in Children’s Health Coverage
The uninsured rate for children dropped to 8% in 2010, the lowest point ever achieved since the federal government began tracking this statistic in 1987. The following issue-brief attempts to gain an increased understanding of factors contributing to the success in coverage of children by conducting site visits and interviews with key stakeholders in four…
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Essential Health Benefits: What Does the CHIP Experience Show Us?
So my previous blog on this topic talked about how the CHIP/Essential Health Benefits analogy has its limits – still it is interesting to look at the choices that states have made for their benefits packages in separate state CHIP programs. According to data collected and released by NASHP from mid-2008, the most popular choice…
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Medicaid Constitutional Challenge Based on ‘More Rhetoric Than Fact”
We haven’t heard much about what Politico has dubbed the “sleeper issue” of the Supreme Court case because it is the least likely to be found unconstitutional. This week, Attorney Paul Clement tried to stoke a little life into the sleeper issue by tying it to the more controversial mandate provision. In the brief he filed…
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NASHP and Children’s Dental Health Project Issue Report
By Leigha Basini, National Academy for State Health Policy The new year brings many new things: new discussions about CCIIO’s newly released Essential Health Benefits (EHB) Bulletin and benefit provisions in the seemingly still new Affordable Care Act. But state CHIP directors may also be thinking about a slightly older benefit provision–the CHIPRA dental mandate. NASHP,…
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Health Care Reform Funding for School-Based Health Centers Helps Keep Students in School and Learning
By John Schlitt, National Assembly on School-Based Health Care (NASBHC) Banner Health System and uninsured children in Phoenix, Arizona recently received good news from the federal government. Word came in December that Banner was among a select number of programs across the country that competed successfully for Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) federal school-based…
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Maryland Kids Win with CHIPRA Performance Bonus
By Leigh Cobb, Advocates for Children and Youth and Suzanne Schlattman, Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative Education Fund Maryland has just received its second Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) performance bonus from CMS. This recognizes its efforts to identify and enroll eligible children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Maryland enrolled…
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Paying Pharmacies Honest Prices for Prescription Drugs
As policymakers across the country look to balance their budgets, some are turning to Medicaid, recycling the same harmful policies they’ve used year-after-year: eliminating coverage for vulnerable Americans, restricting critical benefits like prescription drug coverage, imposing premiums on those who can’t afford them, and slashing already-low provider reimbursement rates. Community Catalyst and Georgetown University Health…
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First Focus Calls for Greater Investment in Children
By Tara Mancini Over the past 35 years, our nation’s GDP has increased by 168 percent, yet those gains are mostly missing from the picture when viewing from the perspective of the Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI). Over that same time period, the quality of life for children has increased by just a little…
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‘Tis the Season for Medicaid Performance Bonuses
‘Twas nearing the end of two thousand eleven Performance bonus time; new states total seven In addition to sixteen that earned a bonus last year Twenty-three states have $296 million reasons to cheer Child advocates are proud of the effort they led Tactics for removing red tape dance in their heads With Medicaid and…
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Setting the Record Straight on Medicaid Spending
By Tara Mancini Last week, NASBO released their 2010 Report of State Expenditures and per usual, the top line message picked-up by most of the media was the large share of state expenditures used on Medicaid. However, there are always exceptions to the rule, and Kristen Stewart writing for a Salt Lake City Tribune Blog…
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HHS Suggests States Will Have Choices on Essential Health Benefits
By Joe Touschner For nearly a year now, we’ve been tracking the process of defining the essential health benefits. The EHB package will define the minimum set of benefits to be covered by insurance plans in the individual and small group markets as well as benchmark Medicaid plans and Basic Health Programs. On Friday afternoon,…
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Coming Soon to a State Near You? Wisconsin seeks to preview a slasher triple feature
By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families A drama has been slowly unfolding in Wisconsin relating to the shape of the state’s Medicaid program. If it were made into a movie, it would be a slasher film with an unwilling cast of nearly half of the 780,000 people enrolled in Wisconsin’s highly successful…
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Examining Medicaid Managed Long-Term Service and Support Programs: Key Issues To Consider
By Laura Summer, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute (Editor’s Note: Given the increasing interest in Medicaid managed care among states eager to achieve cost-savings, we asked our colleague Laura Summer to blog for us on her latest report on managed care. Her report focused on long-term care services but it provides some helpful insights into broader…
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Proposed Medicaid Premiums Challenge Coverage for Florida’s Children and Parents
Florida’s proposed changes to its Medicaid program include a requirement for nearly all Medicaid beneficiaries, including children, who are enrolled in managed-care plans to pay a $10 monthly premium as a condition for Medicaid eligibility. This could result in 800,000 Florida children and parents – the majority of them children in very-low-income families –leaving Florida…
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Looking Ahead to 2012, What Changes Are In Store for Florida’s Medicaid Program?
Medicaid is a critical part of Florida’s health care system. It covers 3.1 million people in the state, the majority of whom are children. In 2006, a five-year pilot program that replaced traditional Medicaid with an unusual managed-care model and other features that required a Section 1115 waiver from the federal government. In 2012, there…