2013
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Covering Parents is Good for Kids: How Expanding Medicaid Helps Low-Income Adults
(Editor’s Note: Welcome to the Center for Children and Families’ “Covering Parents is Good for Kids” blog series. 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; covering parents can help depressed mothers get treatment and improve…
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A Look At What State Legislatures Are Up To On Navigators
By Katie Keith, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms In addition to our efforts to track state legislation on the Affordable Care Act’s market reforms (check out our most recent blog on the 2014 market reforms here), our team is also tracking legislation that relates to exchange establishment and development. In this blog—brought to…
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New Resource Looks at Premium Assistance Options in Medicaid/CHIP
Yesterday my new report for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured was released called Premium Assistance in Medicaid and CHIP: An Overview of Current Options and Implications of the Affordable Care Act. The paper examines how statutory changes in the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act and the Affordable Care Act have changed…
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New Study Finds Failure to Expand Medicaid Could be Costly for Employers
A new study provides states with yet another reason to accept federal funding to extend Medicaid coverage to more uninsured people. A study by Jackson Hewitt Tax Service found that states that fail to accept the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid option will leave employers exposed to higher shared responsibility payments than employers in states that…
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Consumer Advocates Respond to HHS’s Model Application
By Jocelyn Guyer Let’s just say it straight out. Congress handed the Administration a Mt. Everest-sized challenge when it said they must develop a simple, streamlined model application for enrollment in all possible sources of ACA coverage – Exchange coverage, Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTCs), Medicaid and CHIP. It would be hard enough to figure…
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Replacing ARKids First with Exchange Coverage Would Put Children – and Arkansas’s Success – at Risk
Like most health policy folks, I have been watching developments in my home state of Arkansas with much interest. Recent media reports have discussed interest among state leaders to use Medicaid to purchase plans on the exchange, also known as the marketplace that will make private insurance available to many uninsured Arkansans starting next year…
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Premium Assistance in Medicaid and CHIP: An Overview of Current Options and Implications of the Affordable Care Act
Premium assistance is the use of public funds through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to purchase private coverage. States have pursued premium assistance with varied objectives, including covering parents not otherwise eligible for public coverage and promoting the use of private coverage. Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage expansions is likely to spark renewed…
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Final Rule Sets Insurance Market Reforms
By Joe Touschner In addition to providing authority to expand Medicaid and establish health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act works to improve health care coverage by introducing key reforms to how private health plans are offered and sold, mostly in the individual and small group markets. A recent final rule from HHS clarifies a…
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Finding the Pot of Gold at the End of the Navigator Rainbow!
News that a new proposed rule on Navigators is under review at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) hopefully means it won’t be long before we see model navigator training, conflict of interest and privacy standards. With any luck, release of the proposed standards should pave the way for the federal navigator grant solicitation.…
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Florida Medicaid Expansion – Not Dead Yet
Yesterday, the Florida Senate Select Committee on PPACA voted against a Florida Medicaid expansion on a straight party line vote – a surprise to some since a few Republicans on the committee, including Chairman Negron, had indicated that they were interested in moving forward. Many media sources are reporting that the Medicaid expansion is all…
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Ryan Budget Would Drastically Alter Medicaid
In releasing his budget today, Chairman Paul Ryan stated that a budget is a “means to an end”. After scanning his budget, you may wonder what drastic end he has in mind. Once again, his budget proposal is lopsided and would harm the most vulnerable while protecting the most secure. His plan would radically alter…
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National League of Cities Receives Funding from Atlantic Philanthropies to Help Cities Improve Outreach and Enrollment
By Wesley Prater The National League of Cities (NLC) recently received a grant by Atlantic Philanthropies to conduct a three-year project, focused primarily on helping cities expand access to Medicaid and CHIP. The project will provide technical assistance and grants to help cities develop outreach and enrollment campaigns. Request for Proposals (RFPs) will be released…
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Assister Types Abound: But Where Oh Where Have All the In-Person Assisters Gone?
Last summer in a refresh of the exchange establishment grants, CMS quietly offered federal funding for a new category of assisters, called “in-person assisters” (IPAs). In November, I summarized what we did and didn’t know about IPAs in this blog post. In a nutshell, IPAs are intended to help exchanges meet their requirement to…
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Videos Help Advocates Add Family Perspectives to Debate on Health Care
By Adam Searing, North Carolina Justice Center It’s been a busy start to the year with the Affordable Care Act’s implementation playing out around the country. In many states the most contentious issue has been whether to accept federal money to cover more people with Medicaid. Other issues from childcare to paid sick days are…
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Medicaid Access: Increased Demand for Primary Care Providers Will Vary Across Country
By Tara Mancini See CCF’s latest fact sheet on Medicaid Access Earlier this week, my colleague, Joan Alker, blogged about how Medicaid provides access to needed care. As she mentioned, the decision to extend Medicaid coverage to millions of the uninsured has often been met with skepticism over whether the health care system has the…
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Know Your Audience: Lessons for Online Paths to Coverage
Read the latest Mathematica evaluation of California’s web-based application system. Gene Lewit, David and Lucile Packard Foundation Enrolling almost 30 million Americans in health coverage starting January 1, 2014, is the sort of thing that can keep people up at night. It’s a daunting task, which the Affordable Care Act (ACA) sought to make easier…
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New Resources from CCF Shows Medicaid Provides Access to Needed Care
A perennial question that is raised about Medicaid is whether beneficiaries can actually find doctors to access the care they need. A new factsheet from CCF on access to health care summarizes available research which shows that in general the answer is a resounding yes. Studies have consistently found that access to primary and preventive…
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Eliminate CHIP Waiting Period – No Child Should Wait for Coverage
As we’ve highlighted several times, the recently proposed ACA rules on Medicaid, CHIP, and the Exchanges kept the option for states to continue requiring uninsured children to wait up to 90 days before enrolling in CHIP. It bears repeating: Waiting periods, still in use in 38 states, make no sense in a post-ACA universe where…
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Final Essential Health Benefits Rule Unveiled
By Joe Touschner It’s been a long process involving an in-depth study, state choices, and stakeholder comment on multiple rounds of proposals from HHS, but we now have the final essential health benefits rule. Along with it came final rules on actuarial value for QHPs and cost-sharing limits in many types of private health coverage.…
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Florida Governor is a “YES” on Medicaid
Governor Scott, a leading opponent of the Affordable Care Act, has just announced his support for accepting the federal dollars to extend Medicaid coverage – a decision which according to our study on this issue will lead to approximately one million Floridians getting coverage. This is a very consequential decision – Florida ranks 50 out…