2010
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GAO Finds Medicaid & CHIP Dental Care Slowly Improving
By Meg Booth and Colin Reusch, Children’s Dental Health Project It’s been almost four years since the tragedy of Deamonte Driver, a twelve-year-old Maryland boy who died due to complications of an untreated abscessed tooth. His death highlighted the worst case scenario for families struggling to find dental care. Those of you who know Children’s…
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Self Assessment Toolkit Can Help States Improve Medicaid and CHIP
There is little debate that simplifying and streamlining the application and renewal process makes it easier for both eligibility workers and families applying for coverage. But there’s nothing simple or streamlined about re-engineering the business processes and systems that are used to administer Medicaid and CHIP, so it’s easier to tread water than dive in. Despite…
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Americans Want Health Care Reform to Go Forward
(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post and Step Forward blogs) By John Bouman, President, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law Some people are spinning hard about the outcome of the recent mid-term elections. They are trying to say that the changes in Congress were a “mandate” to repeal health care reform. As usual, most of those spinners…
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Keeping Up with Affordable Care Act Implementation: Health Reform GPS and NASHP’s State Reforum
By Joe Touschner The pace of activity from federal agencies since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March has been remarkable — it seems like there is a new grant announcement, request for comment, or regulation every week. And states are just getting started — soon we’ll see exchange planning and launch, consumer…
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States Still Floating Unwise Proposals to Opt Out of Medicaid
It seems odd that such an unwise idea as opting out of Medicaid would even make it to the level of serious public debate. As long as states keep floating such irresponsible proposals, we’ll keep blogging about why it’s such a bad idea. This week, we bring you a blog post from Edwin Parks of the Center on…
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First Focus Examines Impact of Recession on Children
Our friends at First Focus released a report entitled “The Effect of the Recession on Child Well-Being”. The report looks at child health, food security, housing stability and child maltreatment. It underscores the importance of government programs during times of recession and finds that it will take a long time for low-income families to recover from…
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HHS Announces Medical Loss Ratio Rule
By Joe Touschner Even with all the ink, airtime, and pixels used in debating and discussing the Affordable Care Act over the last year, many of its provisions–including some very important ones–remain obscure. HHS today put forward regulations implementing one of those seemingly obscure, but actually quite vital parts of the law. The new regulations…
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HHS Issues First Guidance on Exchanges
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown Health Policy Institute Yesterday, HHS issued the first guidance on exchanges, the “first in a series of documents” they plan to publish over the next three years to give states the information they need to establish exchanges. Though the department plans to issue regulations for public comment in 2011, the goal of this…
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New Congressman Wants His Health Insurance Now – Opposes ACA
By Vincent DeMarco, President, Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund, Inc. Maryland’s Representative-Elect Andy Harris, who opposed health care for people as a state senator and a candidate for Congress, is now demanding government-subsidized health care for himself a month early. Maybe he will learn what it would be like for the millions of Americans,…
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Medicaid Managed Care – States Should Look Before They Leap (Again!)
By Joel Ferber, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and nationally recognized expert on Medicaid A recent article in USA Today focused on Medicaid managed care and its implications for health reform. Health insurance companies are clamoring for the substantial new business that will become available when Medicaid coverage is expanded to an estimated 16 million…
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NAIC Makes Progress on Model State Laws – Comments are Welcome
It’s been a busy few weeks for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as they move forward on implementing key provisions of the ACA. A summary of the latest activity – and ways you can get involved – are summarized below. 1. Exchanges. The NAIC’s subgroup on exchanges just reported out a model state law…
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Comments on Public Process Submitted to CMS: Waiver Watchers Rise to the Challenge!
Today the attached comments on the proposed federal regulations on public process for Medicaid and CHIP demonstration waivers were submitted to CMS. A diverse and well-respected list of 79 groups – including 48 national and 31 state groups — joined the effort by signing onto CCF’s comments. In addition, the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities…
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Dropping Out of Medicaid? Wyoming Has Taken a Look at the Consequences
By Martha Heberlein An idea has been floating about suggesting that states that don’t want to comply with the new Medicaid provisions will simply “opt out” of the program. While much of the recent chatter has centered on Texas, Governor Freudenthal of Wyoming asked his Department of Health to examine the issue back in March.…
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Show Me the Mandate
Health reform was not a dominant factor in influencing voters’ decisions during the mid-term elections according to the recently released Kaiser health tracking poll. That may be surprising given what we’ve been hearing about the election being a mandate for repeal of the new law but it is consistent with other polls. The Kaiser poll…
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What’s in the IT Grants for Medicaid and CHIP Advocates? (Innovator Grants – Part II)
I was really excited when I saw the HHS announcement to fund up to 5 state (or state consortia) projects to develop health exchange IT systems. Knowing the resources and time required to design, build and test these kind of systems has created much anxiety among states and advocates waiting for urgently needed federal guidance…
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Waiver Watchers – We Need You More Than Ever
One of the consequences of the election, I believe, is that given the significant number of opponents of health care reform who were elected as Governors and/or Insurance Commissioners, we are going to see more “waiver” proposals. Even before the election, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was talking up the prospect of seeking legislation to allow…
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CMS Proposes A Medicaid Rule You (and States) Might Like
I’m not big on rules. When I ran New Hampshire’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and had to talk with a family who was unhappy about some bureaucratic rule, I often diffused the conversation by saying “I don’t make the rules, if I did there wouldn’t be any.” I know, that was a cop-out but it…
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Change Isn’t Easy
Some readers may remember the now deceased advice columnist Ann Landers – something of a national icon in her heyday. Sometimes she was off target — like when she told readers not to throw rice at weddings because birds would explode from eating it — but I was thinking today about (the only) one of…
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New Data and Messaging Tools Can Help Reach Uninsured Children Eligible for Medicaid or CHIP
On October 25, 2010, the National Covering Kids and Families Network hosted a webinar to present new data on who the uninsured children are and where they live, as well as new research on effective messaging to reach families of uninsured children who are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. Jenny Kenney and Juliana Macri…
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HHS Announces Early Innovator Grants for Development of State Exchange Information Systems
Successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act relies heavily on technology to provide consumer-friendly information, to ensure that eligibility is streamlined, and to coordinate enrollment between Medicaid, CHIP and the Exchange. To support the development of these critical systems, HHS has announced “Early Innovator” grants to encourage and reward states for leading the way and…