2019
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Research Update: A Spotlight on Children’s Oral Health
This week, I am reading the latest research on children’s oral health. Some of the notable findings include: poorer children’s oral health leads to worse academic performance, there continue to be disparities in access to child preventive oral health services, and providing dental benefits to parents may have a positive impact on children’s use of…
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Kids Coverage at Risk in Arizona
Kids coverage is again at risk in Arizona, as lawmakers there fight over whether to freeze enrollment in the state’s CHIP program (“KidsCare”), which currently covers 34,316 children. An unusual Arizona law requires the KidsCare program to freeze enrollment if the federal matching rate drops below 100%. Because a temporary increase in the CHIP matching…
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Medicaid Expansion Fills Gaps in Maternal Health Coverage Leading to Healthier Mothers and Babies
Introduction Disruptions in health coverage are associated with adverse health consequences.[note] B.D. Sommers et al., “Insurance Churning Rates For LowIncome Adults Under Health Reform: Lower Than Expected But Still Harmful For Many,” Health Affairs 35, no. 10 (October 2016), available at https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2016.0455.[/note] This is especially true for women in their childbearing years, when a pregnancy…
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Trump Administration Proposes to Make Fewer Low-Income Individuals and Families Eligible for Medicaid and CHIP Over Time
The Trump Administration has proposed to change how the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is adjusted annually for inflation. While this sounds like a highly technical change, it would do considerable harm. That is because the OPM is used to set the federal poverty line, which in turn is used to determine income eligibility…
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Leading Children’s Health and Medical Organizations Sound Alarm on Drop in Child Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment
As Tricia Brooks uncovered in her recent blog, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) nationwide fell by about 840,000 in 2018. In response to this news, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Defense Fund, Children’s Dental Health Project, Children’s Hospital Association, Family Voices, First Focus on Children, Georgetown…
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Tennessee to become first state to seek approval for Medicaid block grant
Fierce Healthcare By: Paige Minemyer Tennessee legislators have approved a bill that would make the state the first to request approval from the Trump administration for a Medicaid block grant. … The White House has also built Medicaid block grants into its budget proposals for 2019 and 2020, making clear that it backs the idea.…
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Tennessee Becomes First State To Embrace Block Grants For Medicaid Funding
Wall Street Journal By: Stephanie Armour Republican Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign legislation soon seeking Trump administration approval to turn federal funding for the state’s Medicaid program into a lump-sum grant. Currently, Tennessee, like other states, gets open-ended federal dollars because the government matches a percentage of state spending. … “It’s extremely foolish…
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CBO Estimates Indicate Proposed Drug Rebate Safe Harbor Rule Would Increase Federal and State Medicaid Costs by $10.5 Billion Over Next Decade
On May 2, as part of its new baseline, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued an analysis of the impact on Medicaid of the Trump Administration’s proposed rule to eliminate the safe harbor in the federal anti-kickback law for rebates negotiated by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) on behalf of Medicaid managed care plans and Medicare…
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Medicaid Managed Care Transparency: What Can Quality Data Do?
Earlier this week the data transparency door to Medicaid managed care opened. Not as wide as some of us would hope, but wide enough to start a detailed conversation about the performance of individual MCOs on quality. It happened at a briefing sponsored by the California Health Care Foundation and took the form of a…
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Medicaid Work Requirements Hit Roadblocks
Pew Stateline By: Michael Ollove Toward the end of 2018, the Trump administration seemed to be marching briskly toward its goal of requiring able-bodied adults in Medicaid to prove they had jobs to participate in the public health plan for the poor. But while a number of states still are adopting work requirements, the path…
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Even many who support Trump’s drug rebate policy don’t support it in Medicaid
STATE By: Nicholas Florko Medicaid advocates have a lot of opinions about the Trump administration’s rebate rule. Namely, that it makes no sense. The Trump administration’s controversial proposal to eliminate the drug rebates that pharmacy middlemen and insurers use to negotiate down the price of certain drugs doesn’t stop with that massive change — it…
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After falling for years, the number of uninsured children is rising
Marketplace By: Kimberly Adams The percentage of uninsured children in the U.S. has been in decline for years. But a new study by the University of Minnesota finds that it’s moving upward again. The rate increased across demographic groups, and the study estimates that some 4 million U.S. kids are now uninsured. Declining rates of…
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New CBO Baseline Expects Number of Uninsured to Rise by 5 Million Over Next Decade
On May 2, the Congressional Budget Office issued its new baseline, including health coverage projections for the period 2019-2029. CBO expects the number of non-elderly uninsured people nationwide will increase by 5 million over the next ten years, from 30 million in calendar year 2019 to 35 million in calendar year 2029. That is in…
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Pediatricians and CCF Release 2019 State Snapshots on Children’s Health Coverage
We’ve continued the tradition we started three years ago with our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics to create state snapshots that focus on the valuable role Medicaid and CHIP fill for children. These snapshots provide details on who’s covered by Medicaid and CHIP in each state and how Medicaid/CHIP fit into the overall…
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Why is Florida’s Medicaid Work Reporting Proposal the Harshest in the Country for Kids and Families?
A few weeks ago I blogged about Florida’s bill being the worst I have seen nationwide. The bill’s sponsor definitely didn’t read the blog (as was made clear during the House floor debate), nor did he seem concerned about the many valid criticisms raised during the debate, and the bill passed the House last week…
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State Medicaid and CHIP Snapshots, 2019
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) created factsheets underscoring the importance of Medicaid in providing coverage for children in all 51 states (including the District of Columbia). Sources are available. Previous snapshots can be found here.
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Nebraska Residents Will Have to Wait for Medicaid Expansion While Governor Puts More Obstacles in Path to Coverage
Writer George Orwell would love the Nebraska Governor’s complex plan to implement the simple expansion of Medicaid health coverage passed by Nebraska voters in 2018 that would help an estimated 95,000 of the state’s residents gain coverage. In Orwell’s book “1984”, the fictional state of Oceania asked citizens to accept opposing ideas as both being…
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Medicaid and Early Childhood Home Visiting Collaboration: A Washington Perspective
Early in Washington’s Medicaid and early childhood home visiting collaboration, it was clear we needed a common understanding of home visiting services compared to home-based Medicaid services. As it happens, there are some significant differences! Although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not authorize home visiting models in their entirety, they do…
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More Sabotage: Trump Administration Cuts Marketplace Premium Subsidies
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently issued the Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2020, which finalized a harmful provision first proposed in January that would effectively reduce the amount of premium tax credits available to purchase marketplace plans over time. Like prior Administration actions that have sabotaged the marketplaces, this would…
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New Data Show Widespread Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP Coverage in 2018
We’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of final Medicaid and CHIP enrollment data for 2018, which was expected to be posted almost a month ago. The wait is finally over but not our concerns about what’s happening. In the meantime, more stories about eligibility system issues in a handful of states and states conducting more…
