2012
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New Issue Brief Focuses on State Action to Promote Child-Only Coverage
Editor’s Note: This blog originally appeared in the CHIRblog, a blog focused on health insurance coverage, insurance markets, and how people are affected by insurance reform. By Katie Keith, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Today, the Commonwealth Fund released a new issue brief on the availability of child-only policies. The issue brief is part of an ongoing series by CHIR on…
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Fla. Medicaid program in limbo
Associated Press October 7, 2012 By Kelli Kennedy MIAMI (AP) — Millions of uninsured Florida families and health care providers are in a purgatory of sorts. Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature want to privatize the state’s Medicaid program, but need the Obama administration’s permission. The Obama administration wants to make more low-income Floridians eligible for Medicaid,…
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Covering Parents is Good for Kids: Treating Depressed Mothers Can Help Children’s Development
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the fourth in a series of blogs on how covering parents helps children. Previous blogs on this topic have pointed out that extending Medicaid coverage to parents will provide a good value to states; maternal, infant and early childhood home visiting programs help prevent child maltreatment; and the single best way…
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Pregnant Women’s Medicaid Eligibility After 2014 – What’s the Minimum?
By Martha Heberlein A great degree of confusion surrounds this question and for good reason. You may be surprised to learn that come January 1, 2014, states must cover pregnant women in Medicaid at either 133% of the FPL OR the income standard in place as of December 19, 1989 (or as of July 1,…
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Waiting for 2014: One Family’s Story
How the ACA’s essential health benefits may help Henry get the health care he needs to grow and thrive. By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown University Center for Health Insurance Reform Losing health care coverage just before your due date is not something you read about in “What to Expect When Expecting.” Who would expect to lose…
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Medical Assistance Redetermination Process Frustrates Workers and Recipients; Produces Churn
WESA September 25, 2012 By Erika Beras Eva Bednar’s 44-year-old son Andrew is an epileptic, he has been diagnosed with intermitent explosive disorder and he is borderline intellectually disabled. This summer he was one of thousands of adults who the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare cut from its medical assistance program for the poor and disabled. Andrew…
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Summaries of Insurance Benefits and Coverage will Help Consumers Comparison Shop
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms As of September 23, the “wild west” of shopping for health insurance coverage has been at least partially tamed, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Consumers can now get standardized, simplified summaries of benefits and coverage (SBC) that will help them understand what’s covered by an…
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ACS Data Shows Country Heading in Right Direction but has Long Way to Go in Bringing Down Uninsured Rate
By Tara Mancini Today’s release of the 2011 estimates of the American Community Survey (ACS) continues the good news on coverage announced in last week’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The national uninsured rate saw a significant decline from 15.5% to 15.1%, with children and young adults likely accounting for much of that decrease (sadly, poverty…
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Tick Tick Tick – Do States Still Have Time to Build New IT Systems?
High-performing, technology-enabled eligibility and enrollment systems are unequivocally at the heart of the vision of streamlined, real-time access to health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). New systems offer the promise of remedying many of the consumer issues that advocates have worked on for years including eliminating unnecessary paperwork, making notices clear and understandable,…
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Uninsured Vets and Their Families Will Benefit from ACA
It was somewhat startling to learn that one in ten veterans are uninsured in the U.S. A report released earlier this summer by the Urban Institute’s Jennifer Haley and Genevieve Kenney (based on 2010 ACS data) found that 1.3 million of the nation’s 12.5 million nonelderly veterans did not have health insurance coverage and weren’t using…
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State Fact Sheets Highlight Importance of Medicaid Coverage for Children
By Ielnaz Kashefipour, American Academy of Pediatrics The American Academy of Pediatrics, in partnership with the Children’s Hospitals Association (formerly NACHRI), this week produced updated state-by-state fact sheets that explain the importance of the Medicaid program for children. These fact sheets are used in federal and state advocacy efforts to protect the Medicaid program from…
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NAIC – Moving Forward on Consumer Protections in the ACA
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms I have good news for those of us who have been feeling something lacking in our lives lately. You know who you are. You’re deep into ACA implementation but the last few months you’ve felt a void…a sort of emptiness…. You’re just not feeling the…
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Stand Up for Kids By Voting For Comments on Kansas Medicaid Waiver Proposal on Idea Factory
HHS has done a good job of inserting more transparency into the Medicaid waiver approval process and providing “waiver watchers” with an opportunity to provide our input on important health care policy decisions. One way the agency is collecting input is through the “Idea Factory” website. Now is the time to take HHS up on…
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Lack of Dental Care Poses Health Risk to Children
By Tara Mancini Dental cavities are the most prevalent chronic disease among children. Many children are not able to obtain the dental care they need due to cost barriers, a shortage of dental health professionals in their area or for other reasons. According to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, as many as 4.6 million…
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Designing Navigator Programs to Meet the Needs of Consumers: Duties and Competencies
Exchanges are required to set up navigator programs and federal regulations specify a minimum set of duties and competencies required of navigators. However, states have to flexibility to expand the role of navigators to maximize the effectiveness and reach of their programs. By identifying and focusing on the needs of consumers upfront, Exchanges are better…
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Federal Policy Makes a Difference in the Lives of Children and Families
As many readers know, this week the annual Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey numbers were released and the number of uninsured persons actually declined for the first time since 2007 – by 1.4 million. Since 2007 the number of uninsured adults has been growing – this year marks the first turnaround. This bit of good…
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Creating a Job Description for Navigators
We’ve posted several blogs over the past year about how navigators will play a critical role in helping consumers connect to expanded and more affordable health coverage options. In July, we launched a new series of briefs about navigators, the first of which, “Countdown to 2014: Designing Navigator Programs to Meet the Needs of Consumers,”…
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More Kids Will Be Connected with Coverage Thanks to ACA
By Lincoln Nehring, Voices for Utah Children The Affordable Care Act reduces the number of eligible, but unenrolled kids in Medicaid and CHIP. Despite what you may have heard, this is a good thing. In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Times, Utah Governor Gary Herbert concedes that the ACA’s now-optional Medicaid expansion is…
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Uninsured Rate Declines
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Uninsured Rate Declines (Washington, D.C.) – Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families Co-Director Joan Alker issued the following statement in response to the release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States report: “The U.S. Census data released today underscore the important contribution the…
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Premiums for Employer-Sponsored Coverage Increase Modestly, but Lower-Income Workers Pay More
By Martha Heberlein The annual Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust survey of employer health benefits was released today and found that the average premium for family based coverage rose to $15,745, or just 4% compared to 2011 (premiums for individual plans rose 3%). Although moderate, this growth has far out-paced workers wages, which…