2013
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Ravens vs. 49ers Face off in the Say Ahhh! Super Blog-Off – Vote for Your Favorite Team
Happy Super Bowl Weekend! As diehard Say Ahhh! fans know, that means it’s time for our annual Super Blog-Off. This year we’ve asked the Ravens and 49er blogging teams to face off on which state has done more to make the promise of the Affordable Care Act a reality for its residents. Taking the field…
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SUPER BLOG-OFF: Go Ravens!
Editor’s Note: To vote for the Ravens, click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on the bottom and like, tweet or do both. If you aren’t into social media, send it to your friends by email.) By Suzanne Schlattman, Maryland Health Care for All Coalition I’m not a big fan of football, but I’m…
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SUPER BLOG-OFF: Let’s Win This Thing, California!
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the Ravens vs. 49ers Super Blog-Off. To vote for the 49ers, click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on the bottom and like, tweet or do both. If you aren’t into social media, send it to your friends by email.) By: Kristen GoldenTesta (The Children’s Partnership) and Mike Odeh (Children Now) Ok,…
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New Mexico Says “Yes” to the Medicaid Expansion – and Now the Real Work Begins
By Kelsey McCowan Heilman, New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty and Nick Estes, New Mexico Voices for Children Earlier this month, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez announced that New Mexico will accept federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility for adults to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). This is a critical decision for the…
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Final Treasury Rule Contains Family Penalty
By Joe Touschner In a move that will keep many children out of subsidized exchange coverage, the Department of Treasury today released a final rule that includes the “family penalty” in the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits. (Note that this problem is also frequently referred to as the “family glitch” or “firewall”). We’ve been…
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Why Should Health Insurance Exchanges Drive Higher-Quality Health Care?
By Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Do you remember the last time you had a headache and your doctor used leeches to restore you to good health? Fortunately, neither do I. That’s because the practice of bloodletting – the most common surgical procedure for almost two thousand years because it was thought to improve health…
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Extending Medicaid to More Uninsured Pennsylvanians Makes Sense for Families and the State Budget
By Ann Bacharach, Pennsylvania Health Law Project Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States once said: “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” Pennsylvania has an opportunity to do the “right thing”. Extending Medicaid coverage to more…
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Covering Parents is Good for Kids: Healthy Adults Better Equipped to Help At-Risk Children
Today was the first day of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI) inaugural LEAD Conference. Our colleagues down the hall at the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform were the first GPPI research center to be featured at the annual LEAD Conference. The goal of the conference is to bridge research with practice. Dean Montgomery opened…
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Annual 50-State Medicaid and CHIP Survey Shows Progress and Gaps
For the third year, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured teamed up with CCF to conduct an annual survey of state Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost-sharing practices. This year’s report, “Getting into Gear for 2014,” clearly shows that states continue to simplify and modernize Medicaid and CHIP in ways that…
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Getting Into Gear for 2014: Findings from a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2012-2013
As 2013 begins, implementation of the major provisions of the ACA, including its coverage expansions, is less than a year away. Following the Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ACA and the 2012 elections, efforts to prepare for 2014 are moving into high gear in many states. The majority of states are capitalizing on web-based…
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How Will Families Fare with the Workplace Wellness Rule?
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Improving one’s health usually makes the top ten list for New Year’s resolutions so as we all hit that make or break time on our personal resolutions, let’s take a moment to focus on the proposed workplace wellness rules. The Departments of Health and Human…
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HHS Launches Exchange Outreach Efforts & Opens the ‘Health Insurance Marketplace’
Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms This week, the Department of Health and Human Services began a major push to educate the public about the new health insurance options available to them under the Affordable Care Act, including the newly-named Health Insurance Marketplace (formerly known as the “Federally Facilitated Exchange.”) With just under nine months to…
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The New Year Brings Positive News: Medicaid Spending and Enrollment Growth Declined in 2011
By Tara Mancini Earlier this month, the Office of the Actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid released its annual data on national health expenditures, finding that growth remained constant for a third consecutive year. Medicaid spending growth slowed, in contrast to spending by Medicare, private health insurers, and consumers’ out-of-pocket, all of which…
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CHIP Waiting Periods Make No Sense When Families Are Penalized for Not Having Coverage
The latest round of proposed Medicaid regulations has a number of helpful provisions but we couldn’t help be disappointed that the proposed rules allow states to continue to impose CHIP waiting periods on children who have recently been covered by group health insurance. Simply put…waiting periods make no sense in a post-ACA universe in which…
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Breaking News – Arizona’s Governor Says ‘Yes’ to Extending Medicaid Coverage – Is This a Tipping Point?
In her State of the State address today, Governor Jan Brewer said that she will be asking the Arizona Legislature to move forward with an expansion of the Medicaid program for parents and childless adults to 133% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Governor Brewer is proposing a provider assessment to pay for the state’s…
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New Round of Connecting Kids to Coverage Grants Announced
The fact that we can all be proud of achieving historically high rates of health coverage for children (90%) has been the result of a number of successful strategies: savvy advocacy capitalizing on the high value Americans place on children’s health to expand coverage; removal of the red-tape paperwork burden on families and eligibility offices…
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HHS Secretary Answered Several Questions About New Medicaid Coverage and Waivers
As my colleague Elisabeth Burak blogged about last month, Secretary Sebelius released a letter to Governors with answers to 39 frequently asked questions related to ACA implementation on December 10th. Most notably, the FAQ addressed whether or not CMS would allow waivers for “partial expansions” now that the Supreme Court has rendered the expansion of…
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Louisiana Shows States can Streamline Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment AND Achieve Low Eligibility Error Rates
By Stan Dorn, Urban Institute Sometimes people fear that streamlining Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and retention may increase error rates. Louisiana has once again shown, in the words of the Gershwin classic, that “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” On November 21, 2012, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the state’s 2011 Payment Error Rate…
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HHS Sheds Light on How Family Income Will be Calculated Under New MAGI Method for Medicaid and CHIP
By Jocelyn Guyer Over the holidays, while we were all relaxing with family and friends (or sneaking off for fiscal cliff updates), HHS issued an important “Dear State Medicaid Director” letter that will help to determine the income levels for children’s coverage under Medicaid and CHIP for at least the next six years. Not quite…
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Health Insurance Reform Under the Fiscal Cliff Agreement – Mostly Left Untouched
By Sabrina Corlette, Center on Health Insurance Reforms The health insurance reform provisions of the Affordable Care Act were mostly left untouched under the recently passed budget agreement to avert the fiscal cliff, with one exception. The bill rescinds the remaining, unobligated funding in the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) program, ending new grants and loans…