Resources
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President’s Budget Meets with Predictable Response in Unpredictable Year
By Jocelyn Guyer With the release of the President’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal yesterday, CCF staff have begun the annual ritual of digging through lengthy documents and tables to untangle what it might mean for the health care coverage of children and families. It is a challenging task in the best of times, but…
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Medicaid Growth Slows; Medicaid Directors’ Innovative Efforts Expand
By Tara Mancini Overall, the economic conditions surrounding state Medicaid budgets are continuing to improve, even as states make their way through the first full budget year after the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act enhanced FMAP funding expired. In January 2012, unemployment hit a three year low of 8.3 percent, down from 9.4 percent a…
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Good News for Florida’s Kids: The State’s Attempt to Charge Unaffordable Medicaid Premiums Won’t Go Forward
Friday was a good day for Florida’s kids. The federal government indicated that the state would not be allowed to proceed with a proposal, passed by the legislature last spring, to charge all Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled in managed care plans $10 a month regardless of income or age. It is important to note that much…
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Once Again We Look Into the Massachusetts Crystal Ball
By Jocelyn Guyer While we’ve all heard how successful Massachusetts has been in covering kids, a study out in the new edition of the journal Health Affairs looks at the success of health reform for adults in the state. Some highlights: * 94.2% of non-elderly adults had coverage in 2010, compared to 86.6% in 2006 and 77.7%…
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State Tax Revenue Continues to Rise
By Martha Heberlein According to a new report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government, total state tax revenues grew for the 7th straight quarter. Comparing the 3rd quarters of 2011 and 2010, total tax revenues increased by about 6%. Nearly every state (save Alabama, California, and Delaware) saw increases in total tax revenue, with 12…
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HHS Issues New Rules Requiring Insurers to use Plain Language to Help Consumers Compare Insurance Plans
Have you ever had to shop for insurance on your own and faced a bewildering array of options? With insurance companies peppering their plan descriptions with technical language and legalese, so you’re not quite sure what’s really covered? Or even worse, have you ever thought you were buying a good policy only to find out…
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Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs Provides Important Data
By Tara Mancini Say Ahhh! readers should know about an important new data source on Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN); the 2009/10 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. This is the third survey in this series, which is funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) and conducted by…
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Patriots Win 103 – 33
The Giants may be bringing home the Lombardi but Patriots fans are taking home the CHIP III trophy thanks to efforts by Dayanne Leal and Health Care for All Massachusetts. Patriots’ fans brought in 103 comments in support of efforts to connect kids to coverage. (The Giants’ fans? Well, perhaps they were a little preoccupied…
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CHIPRA at Work Three Years Later: Shaping State Actions and Connecting Children to Coverage
The enactment of CHIPRA three years ago gave states additional tools and resources to maintain and improve children’s access to health care. In recent years, the number of uninsured children has decreased by one million, even as child poverty has jumped to alarmingly high levels and more parents and adults have joined the ranks of…
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National Groups Express Concerns About Wisconsin’s Waiver
By Wesley Prater Many thanks to the organizations that joined us in submitting a letter to federal officials in opposition of Wisconsin’s request to waive maintenance of effort provisions. These provisions are so valuable to families because they preserve stability in states’ Medicaid and CHIP programs. Groups such as the AARP, American Heart Association, Center…
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CHIPRA: Running the Ball for Children’s Coverage
It’s a really big weekend: the third anniversary of CHIPRA and the Super Bowl rematch between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. What more could a child health policy wonk and Patriots fan, want? There is a connection between these seemingly disparate events. Thousands of kids watching the action will be dreaming of…
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Giants v. Patriots on Covering Kids – Who are you Rootin’ For?
Undoubtedly you’ve heard about Super Bowl XLVI , but have you heard of CHIP III which is also taking the field this weekend? CHIP is short for the Children’s Health Insurance Program which was reauthorized three years ago this weekend. To mark the occasion, we’re hosting a Super Blog-Off between Patriots fans and Giants fans. But…
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The Patriots have Vince Wilfork. Who is defending your child’s health?
By Dayanne Leal and the team at Health Care For All Massachusetts On Sunday, the Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl. Really, I don’t know why the Giants would even bother to show up. And since a 4th banner in Gillette Stadium is inevitable, it’s worth asking to what can we credit this success? Some…
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New York is Taking GIANT Steps to Cover Kids
By the Community Service Society of New York, Children’s Defense Fund – New York, Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy and Health Care for All New York As the New York Giants head to the Super Bowl this year, another giant comes to mind, the title character from Roald Dahl’s famous book, The Big Friendly Giant (BFG). Just…
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Is Your State Reviewing Potential EHB Benchmarks?
By Joe Touschner HHS’s essential health benefits bulletin is less than two months old–in fact, the comment period just closed this week, click here for our comment letter–but some states are already planning for what it could mean for their residents. The Bulletin indicates that states will be able to choose the core of their…
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The Pace of Progress in the States
By Martha Heberlein As legislative sessions are kicking off, it will be interesting to see which states take steps towards implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) this year. A new report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that those states that have been moving most slowly on reform are also the…
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Something to Celebrate
By Gretchen Hammer, Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved This month, All Kids Covered released Crossing the Finish Line: Achieving Meaningful Health Care Coverage and Access for All Children in Colorado. The report provides an update on the current status of meaningful health care coverage and access for children in Colorado, and describes the significant…
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HHS Shares Info on Small Group Plans
By Joe Touschner It’s a busy month on the essential health benefits front! As we’ve noted, one option for states under the proposed approach for state-defined EHB packages is to use one of the state’s three largest small group plans as a benchmark. It’s been difficult to evaluate this proposal because we didn’t know which…
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Keeping Score -How Well Are Medicaid and CHIP Doing?
This week’s national football league conference championship games and the theme my colleague, Jocelyn Guyer, picked for her latest blog (where she admits to an obsession with Tom Brady) got me was thinking about statistics and scores as it relates to children’s coverage. While the uninsured rate is the final score, there are a lot…
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CCF Shares Comments on the Essential Health Benefits Bulletin
By Joe Touschner We have been offering our insights on essential health benefits through a series of blog posts. This post is to alert you that Georgetown CCF has drafted a letter in response to the Bulletin issued by HHS in December. We raise a number of concerns with the Bulletin’s approach to essential health…