2012
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States Maintained Medicaid Coverage with Online Tools, Fewer Enrollment Steps
Government Health IT January 18, 2012 More than one half of states expanded and simplified their Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs eligibility, enrollment and renewal procedures in 2011, often using technology to streamline and automate processes. That efficiency helped states to continue their coverage for low-income adults and children at the same level as…
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States’ Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Remained Stable in 2011, Report Says
McKnight’s January 18, 2012 Despite heavily burdened state budgets, states’ Medicaid eligibility and enrollment was stable during 2011, thanks partly to the Affordable Care Act, a new report finds. Without the ACA’s requirement that states maintain current eligibility requirements, many states would have instituted Medicaid cuts to stay afloat, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s…
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Medicaid Enrollment Remained Stable in 2011
National Journal January 18, 2012 The number of Americans getting their insurance from Medicaid or the Childrens Health Insurance Program remained stable in 2011, despite a recession that strained state budgets and pushed more people into poverty, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation released on Wednesday. Read the Full Article
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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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How Many Would Drop Out if They Had to Pay a Medicaid Premium?
The Gainesville Sun January 15, 2012 Asked if she could afford $30 a month to keep her three children current on the state’s insurance for low-income Floridians, Andrea Powers said she was uncertain. “Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t,” said the Gainesville stay-at-home mom. An academic exercise from Georgetown University that was released last month…
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State’s Failure to Appeal Health Insurance Denials Cost Millions
The Connecticut Mirror January 13, 2012 Connecticut’s child welfare agency spends $16.4 million a year on mental and behavioral health services, a sum that translates to about $30,000 for each child. The problem, says the Department of Children and Families, is that one of every five children has private health insurance that is not covering…
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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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Medicaid Debate: Does Managed Care Work?
Georgia Health News January 11, 2012 Next week, a highly anticipated report on the Georgia Medicaid program’s future is scheduled to be released. The analysis, by the consulting firm Navigant, is expected to take a hard look at the way the state runs its managed care program. The program covers more than 1 million low-income…
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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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States Make Medicaid Expansion Case
Politico January 10, 2012 Twenty-six states on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to overturn the health care reform law’s mandatory state expansion of the Medicaid program, a sleeper issue in the health care reform lawsuit that could determine how much leverage the federal government has with the states on any issue. Read the Full Article
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Essential Health Benefits: A Child’s Perspective
As soon as rumors started flying about what would be in the essential health benefits guidelines I thought hmmmm that sounds a lot like CHIP. At first blush the new guidance does sound like the CHIP model – indeed the guidance says as much (p. 8). But as HHS officials and others have pointed out,…
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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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Pennsylvania Misses Out on Performance Bonus by Failing to Simplify Enrollment
By Ann Bacharach, Pennsylvania Health Law Project Congratulations to the 23 states who received bonus payments of more than $296.5 million for successfully increasing their Medicaid enrollment and implementing five of eight simplification strategies. I’m jealous. While Pennsylvania has increased its Medicaid enrollment between 2008-09 and 2010-11 by more than 10%, it has left an…
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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…