2017
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Top 10 Rural Counties With Largest Share of Kids and Adults Relying on Medicaid to Meet Health Needs
Using data from our Rural Health Policy Project, we just took a look at the counties across the country that have the highest percent of children and adults relying on Medicaid for their health care. As readers of SayAhhh! know, our study found that children living in small towns and rural areas are significantly more…
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States Move To Tighten Medicaid Enrollment, Even Without A New Health Law
NPR Upshot By: Charles Ornstein No corner of the health care system would be harder hit than Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor, if Republican leaders in Congress round up the votes to repeal major portions of the Affordable Care Act. … “All of the bells and whistles and hoops that people…
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Data: Mississippi Kids Rely On Medicaid; Many In Rural Areas Supporting Trump
Jackson Free Press By: Arielle Dreher A majority of Mississippi kids rely on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program for health care in the state. … The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families analyzed Census data that show that more than 43 percent of children rely on government-funded health insurance in most counties.…
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Kids In Pro-Trump Rural Areas Have A Lot To Lose If Medicaid Is Rolled Back
Los Angeles Times By: Noam N. Levey Communities like this aging West Virginia coal town along the Kanawha River were key to President Trump’s victory last year; more than two-thirds of voters in surrounding Fayette County backed the Republican nominee. … “There is a very strong return on the Medicaid investment,” said Joan Alker, executive…
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Research Shows Medicaid Expansion Improves Access to Health Care, Helps Families Achieve Economic Security
While opponents of Medicaid and its expansion under the ACA continue to claim that the value and quality of care provided by Medicaid is lacking, research offers evidence that Medicaid coverage is largely comparable to private coverage (check out our factsheet for more information). According to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, when compared…
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Top Five Threats to Child Welfare from the Senate Health Care Repeal Proposal
The Senate’s proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to sharply cut Medicaid payments to states through so-called per capita caps can sound very abstract to social workers and policymakers coping with the day-to-day tragedies and crises of child welfare. But these disastrous changes could take a major step toward becoming law after…
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Medicaid Cap: A Bad Deal that Gets Worse Over Time
As we’ve explained, the Senate Leadership bill to “repeal and replace” the ACA includes a cap on federal Medicaid payments to states with two budget dials: a limit on annual growth and a separate reduction for states that spend more on their Medicaid beneficiaries. These dials are designed to lower federal spending, and it turns…
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Senate Repeal Bill More Than Doubles Number of Uninsured Kids
The “Better Care Reconciliation Act” a.k.a. the Senate’s proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid would result in a sharp U-turn in the nation’s historic progress on children’s health coverage. Our nation recently brought the uninsured rate for children down to a record low of less than 5%. A new…
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Americans Watch A Health-Care Bill That Could Upend Many Lives Again
The Washington Post By: Sandhya Somashekhar, Laurie McGinly, Lena H. Sun, and Lenny Bernstein Millions of Americans of all ages and needs would be affected if Republicans in Congress succeed in overhauling major parts of the Affordable Care Act. And the latest maneuvering is only intensifying concerns. … Under a Senate “carve-out” for medically complex…
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Column on Medicaid Cuts
The New York Times By: Thomas B. Edsall More than a third of Americans believe that Medicaid is akin to welfare, with the implicit subtext that racial and ethnic minorities are the principal beneficiaries. If that’s what they think, they’re dead wrong. … Along similar lines, Medicaid provides benefits to significantly higher percentages of children…
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Fitch Report: Proposed Medicaid Cuts Could Impact States’ Credit Ratings
Medicaid is more than simply the nation’s largest health insurer for children. It’s also the largest source of federal funds to states. The Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) bill that stalled in the Senate earlier this week would cut federal payments to states by $772 billion over the next 10 years and establish a platform for the…
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Texas Medicaid Cuts Leave Special Needs Children Without Therapy
ABC News By: Meredith Hoffman Stacey English has modest desires for her 7-year-old daughter Addison: Be able to eat without gagging and move both her arms. … The Texas cuts are separate from Republican proposals now before Congress, which academics say could cut federal Medicaid spending as part of a law to replace the Affordable…
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Fact Check: Will People Lose Coverage Under Medicaid Caps and Cuts
FactCheck.org By: Lori Robertson and Brooks Jackson Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey made the questionable claim that under the Senate bill “no one loses coverage” gained under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. The bill would reduce federal funding to expansion states, leading some states to restrict eligibility, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. … Kelly…
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Fact Check: Does House Health Care Bill Grow Medicaid Spending?
PolitiFact By: Joshua Gillin Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said all the media coverage that declares the Republican health care bills would cut Medicaid is wrong, because he claimed the program actually gets a significant boost over the years. … “There are two reasons Medicaid costs go up: More people are being served and the…
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Medicaid is Vital to Seniors in Small Towns and Rural Areas
Most of our research is focused on children and families, but as we looked at Medicaid use in small towns and rural areas for our recent report, we were curious what the data showed for seniors. After all, grandparents and older relatives are an important part of most families, and their health and wellbeing is…
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Congressional Budget Office says Senate Bill Would Kick 22 Million People Off of Health Coverage
As readers of SayAhhh! already know, the Senate released a discussion draft of their ACA repeal and replace bill last week and updated it today. We’ve already blogged about the implications we see of the Senate draft – like how it is not nice to children and families, how even Jimmy Kimmel says Medicaid caps…
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Proposed Health Bill Would Increase Consumer Debt and Drive Up Uncompensated Care
The Senate health bill ends retroactive eligibility, hospital presumptive eligibility, and any presumptive eligibility determination for expansion adults, which includes many parents. The end of retroactive eligibility and hospital presumptive eligibility will drive up consumer medical debt, which was the largest cause of U.S. bankruptcies prior to the Affordable Care Act. It will also drive…
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Doubling Down on Dialing Down on Children
Last Thursday, the Senate Leadership released a draft bill to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The draft is even worse for the 37 million children that Medicaid covers and the providers who serve them than the bill that narrowly passed the House. Not only would the draft dial down the federal payments to…
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Policymakers, Health Groups, and Jimmy Kimmel Say Medicaid Caps Won’t Work
Over the last week, many health care providers and policy makers have weighed in on the latest health care reform efforts in the Senate. All point to proposed Medicaid caps, which go well beyond the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and undermine well-established paths to coverage for children and families that were in place well before the…
