Resources
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Access to Care for Adults Has Diminished Over the Past 10 Years
By Martha Heberlein A recent article in Health Affairs finds that access to care for adults has deteriorated in the last decade. The likelihood of having a usual source of care, an office visit, or seeing a dentist all declined. At the same time, the likelihood of visiting an emergency room rose slightly. Adults were…
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Youth in Foster Care Can Benefit Greatly from ACA, but Need Advocates to Act Now to Make Sure They Do
By Ginny Puddefoot, The Children’s Partnership Thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), youth who are in foster care on their 18th birthday will soon have access to extended health insurance coverage through Medicaid until reaching the age of 26. This represents a huge benefit to these young people–and a major challenge for all…
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The Complex Modern Family and Barriers to Children’s Health Coverage
By Gene Lewit, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Children with health insurance coverage start off life on the right foot: they are healthier, miss fewer days of school and their parents and guardians miss less work. Happily, recent efforts to grow and strengthen Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program have extended coverage to…
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New Guidance on Federally-Facilitated Exchanges Will Have a Super-Sized Impact
By Jocelyn Guyer Last week, HHS released new guidance on how it will operate federally-facilitated exchanges (FFE) in states that are not ready to operate their own. It is a sparse 19-pages, but it will have a super-sized impact on how ACA is implemented in the months and years ahead. We now are looking at…
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Employer-Sponsored Insurance Declining More Rapidly for Low-Wage Workers
A recent report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation underscores that when it comes to health insurance provided on the job, the less you make the less you get. Take a look at the chart below which illustrates the decline in employer-sponsored coverage by income level. The lowest paid workers –…
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Making Sure Primary Care’s Pay Raise Gets Implemented
Ever had an employer promise you a raise and not deliver? Sure, occasionally the payroll department delays getting the money in your paycheck, but generally speaking, you expect your employer to follow-through. Will this be the case with the mandatory bump-up in Medicaid payment rates to Medicare-equivalent levels for primary care services? Wonk-warning ahead –…
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Medical Homes: Local Focus, Better Health
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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Medicaid Primary Care Services get An Overdue Raise
Primary care is one of our best buys in health care because of its proven effectiveness in improving health outcomes and avoiding more costly health services. This is particularly true for children as they move through different phases of development, and people with chronic health conditions. But it’s also a well-known fact that primary care…
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Quality Mothers Deserve Quality Care!
By Cynthia Pellegrini, March of Dimes It sounds like a rejected Hallmark card: “Sending you wishes for high quality maternal and child health care, today and every day.” But on Mother’s Day, it’s especially appropriate to talk about healthy women, healthy pregnancies, and healthy babies and children. For many of us in the health policy…
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Sequestration Replacement Cuts Could Unravel the Country’s Success in Covering Children
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, charged with finding offsets to avoid reductions to defense spending, has passed a package of cuts totaling $113 billion. The package includes the elimination of two provisions that have helped to drive down the number of uninsured children to the lowest level on record: 1) repeal of the stability…
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House Passes Sequester Replacement Bill – Could Impact Kids Health Care
By Jocelyn Guyer Today the House of Representatives passed the “Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act”. As we’ve mentioned before, the Senate is not planning to take up the measure and the Administration has issued a veto threat should the lopsided measure reach the President’s desk. Despite those assurances, it is worth looking into the measure as…
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Have You Thanked a Nurse Lately?
I’m really bad at keeping up with all these national days, weeks and months of recognition. I somehow missed the opportunity to indulge on National Potato Chip Day (March 14). I didn’t even notice that Ohio Governor Kasich signed a proclamation earlier this year designating February 6 as National Pork Rind Day. But today I…
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Packard Releases New Report on Impact of Children’s Health Care Advocacy
By Gene Lewit and Liane Wong, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Those of you who are regular Say Ahhh! readers know that more children have health insurance coverage today than at any point in the nation’s history. The steady growth in children’s health coverage did not happen in a vacuum. State and…
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Where Would 1.1 Million Kids Be Without the CHIPRA Performance Bonus?
By Martha Heberlein When CHIP was reauthorized in 2009, the Performance Bonus was designed to reward states for enrolling more Medicaid-eligible children. As my colleague, Jocelyn Guyer, pointed out on Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted last week to eliminate these bonuses. While this raises questions of whether the Committee supports the intention of connecting…
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Low Income Kids will be Hit Hardest if Effort to Raid CHIPRA Performance Bonuses Succeeds
By Jocelyn Guyer In my house, I have a general policy for my three boys that they can’t use the words “stupid” and “dumb” unless they are truly warranted (e.g., you can’t call your brother stupid for forgetting the napkins when setting the table, but, I let it go when they decided that Anthony Weiner…
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A Question of Priorities
By Martha Heberlein As the Energy and Commerce Committee searches for options to save the Department of Defense from cuts, coverage for millions of children, parents, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities could end up on the chopping block. This is just one of a number of distressing offsets that also includes repealing exchange…
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Health Disparities Persist Among Children: Opportunities for the ACA
By Tara Mancini While Minority Health Month draws to a close this week, the just released “National Healthcare Disparities Report,” from the Agency for Health Care Quality illustrates the urgency for dedicating more attention to the issue. Mandated by Congress, the 2011 report is the ninth to be issued. Overall, the report finds that access…
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Supporting Families Who Do the Right Thing by Covering Their Kids
By Barbara Munoz, Voices for Utah Children I have had the great privilege over the last several weeks of interviewing families throughout the state of Utah who have benefited from CHIP or Medicaid. There really is no better way of advocating for children’s health than through the telling of personal stories of real families affected…
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Video Advocacy – It’s Easier than it Looks
By Adam Searing, North Carolina Justice Center Recently my colleague Adam Linker and I had the opportunity from our friends here at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and Atlantic Philanthropies to leave the North Carolina Justice Center and travel to other state capitols around the country. Packing our bags and braving airport…