2010
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The District is #1!!!
By Julie Hudman, PhD, Director, Department of Health Care Finance, District of Columbia And no, it isn’t #1 in murders, infant mortality, or a high concentration of policy wonks. It is #1 in enrolling and keeping children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. A Health Affairs article by Dr, Jenny Kenney and others found that the…
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Calling All Medicaid ‘Waiver Watchers’
I know you’re out there because our blog editor assures me that “section 1115 waiver” is one of the top 50 search terms leading readers to Say Ahhh! As I blogged about a few weeks ago, CMS recently released proposed regulations as required by ACA that establish a more robust public notice and comment process…
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CBPP Paper Refutes State Estimates of the Cost of Reform
By Martha Heberlein In a report issued last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities examines recent state estimates on the cost of the Medicaid expansion on Mississippi, Nebraska, and Indiana (states where officials aren’t necessarily supportive of the whole idea). According to Milliman, an actuarial/consulting firm that produced all three estimates, state spending…
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Insurance Commissioners Respond to Consumer Concerns
By now many of you have probably heard about the big news coming out of the NAIC meeting this week in Orlando. After seven months of intense debate and negotiation, the NAIC voted in favor of a regulation defining the ACA’s required “medical loss ratio” (MLR). They rejected several amendments that were heavily pushed by…
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Pregnancy Viewed as Pre-Existing Condition by Many Individual Insurance Plans
By Amanda Jezek, March of Dimes If you are pregnant, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to get maternity coverage in the individual insurance market. An investigation conducted by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce confirmed that major insurers consider pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition that would result in an…
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Washington State Insurance Commissioner Stands Up for Kids
“They can’t say children, just because of their age, can’t be insured. So today I am ordering Regence to once more offer insurance coverage for children.” With those words, Washington State’s Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler, stood up for children and ordered Regence Blue Shield to “cease and desist” from eliminating its child-only policies. Regence is one…
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HHS Announces Consumer Assistance Grants
By Joe Touschner Implementation of the Affordable Care Act continues: Today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced about $30 million in grants to states to fund consumer assistance activities. The grants will support efforts to aid consumers in navigating health insurance, whether it is finding affordable coverage, dealing with a disputed claim denial, or applying the…
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What’s Happening in the Employer Market?
By Martha Heberlein Despite its declining role in recent years, employer-sponsored insurance is a staple of coverage in the U.S. and still accounts for the largest share of health coverage. In fact, in 2009, 56% of people were covered by some form of ESI. However, as the recently released annual Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and…
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Behind Door #1….Coverage!
By Claudia Page, Social Interest Solutions The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is truly a game-changer in how consumers will connect to coverage. For many consumers, especially low-income individuals in need of public benefits, seeking coverage today is a complicated maze of paper forms and referrals, disconnected eligibility systems and silos, multiple trips to social services…
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Florida Ruling Swings Pendulum Toward Supreme Court
[The following blog was originally published on the Community Catalyst’s Health Policy Hub.] By Eva Marie Stahl, Community Catalyst Policy Consultant Yesterday, the federal judge in Florida, Roger Vinson, allowed the lawsuit against the new health law to go forward. In his ruling, the Judge maintained that there were constitutional issues in play and formal…
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Administration Goes to Bat for Children With Pre-Existing Conditions
Today the Obama Administration displayed its firm commitment to stand up for children with pre-existing conditions. HHS Secretary Sebelius sent a letter to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners condemning the insurance industry for failing to follow through on their commitment to allow families with sick or disabled children to buy child-only insurance coverage. (As…
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Statement on the Administration’s Effort to Improve Access to Coverage for Children with Pre-Existing Conditions
(Washington, D.C.) – Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Co-Executive Directors, Joan Alker and Jocelyn Guyer, issued the following statement on efforts by the Administration to improve access to coverage for children with pre-existing conditions. “The Administration took strong action today to help ensure that children with pre-existing conditions can secure health care coverage.…
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Consumer Rep Previews the National Association of Insurance Commissioners National Meeting
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown Health Policy Institute Hard to believe it’s come around again but that National Associatin of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is gearing up for a big national meeting – this time in Orlando, Florida from October 18-21. I and my fellow consumer representatives will be packing our Mickey Mouse ears and fanning out at the…
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No More Annual Limits? Not so Fast
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown Health Policy Institute One of the great new patient protections in the ACA is the ban on lifetime and annual limits. The law, as readers of this blog know, prohibits all plans from imposing lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits and, in 2014, prohibits annual limits on the dollar value of…
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CMS Provides More Clues on How to Bring Home a CHIPRA Performance Bonus
By Joe Touschner and Tricia Brooks The single provision of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) that has generated the most questions to CCF staff has got to be the performance bonus (we love questions so keep them coming!). While funded through CHIPRA, the bonuses are awarded to states that reach the lowest-income kids…
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A Medicaid Trend Nobody’s Talking About
By Martha Heberlein There are some pretty persistent rumors floating around out there regarding state budgets and the growth in Medicaid spending. The optimist in me wants to view these rumors as mere “misunderstandings,” an ill-informed look at the data, and not political posturing meant to frame a highly successful program in a negative light.…
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Eight Difficult Exchange Questions Addressed in New Report
Last week, the Commonwealth Fund released a new report by Timothy Jost on the state-based health insurance exchanges. The author analyzes eight of the most difficult issues that the states and federal government face in implementing the exchanges, and offers recommendations for addressing them. Read the blog or the report to get answers to these…
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Inadequate Health Plans Leave Over 14 Million Children Vulnerable
By Martha Heberlein So often, the focus has been on getting uninsured children covered. While this is certainly a very laudable goal, far less attention has been paid to the adequacy of this coverage. Does it offer benefits or cover services that meet the child’s needs? Does it allow the child to see the health…
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Arkansas Advocates Convene Child Health Summit
By Joe Touschner This week, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families hosted a Child Health Summit to build momentum around covering uninsured, eligible children and moving to coverage for the whole family under health reform. The summit convened state officials, advocates, providers, and others to share information, network, and discuss ways the state could move…
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Medicaid Fills a Critical Role in Economic Downturns
By Martha Heberlein In tough economic times as people lose jobs and health coverage, public programs are there, by design, to fill the need. A set of important reports released yesterday from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured drives home this message. The annual survey of state Medicaid officials found that states had…