Download the Full Explainer (PDF) On April 2, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the second part of a two-part final rule that simplifies the eligibility and enrollment processes for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the Basic Health Program (BHP).1 The rule eliminates certain access barriers for children enrolled […]
On February 1, the State of Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tampa against the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in an effort to prevent the agency from enforcing 12-month continuous eligibility in the state’s CHIP program. As loyal readers of Say Ahhh! know, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 required that […]
Before the new year slips from memory, I wanted to take stock of a few good things happening for kids covered by Medicaid and CHIP this year. Amidst all the dismal news about how nearly 4 million children have lost their coverage during the unwinding – many remain eligible but lost coverage due to red […]
As readers of Say Ahh! know, we’ve been closely tracking data from around the country related to the lifting of the COVID-19 pandemic related continuous coverage protections in Medicaid. The tracker is going up very quickly now– we hit one million on Halloween, two million on Thanksgiving and today three million fewer children are enrolled […]
We have long feared that large numbers of children were losing Medicaid during the unwinding, essentially by mistake, and the ex parte debacle underscores the fact that this is indeed happening. As we’ve previously explained, the ex parte issue came to light in August after a CMS investigation found several states were doing automatic renewals […]
As we continue to unpack the first round of unwinding data released by CMS a few weeks ago, it remains disappointing that there is not more data on children. As readers of SayAhhh! know, the stakes for children are very high with over half of the children in the country insured through Medicaid, and they […]
By Heather Braum, Kansas Action for Children Kansas released the second set of data for how the year-long KanCare unwinding process is going, with data available through June 30, 2023, and has now broken out the data into age ranges and by county for those who had not returned a renewal form in April or May. Since […]
By Ella Mathews and Shreya Kalra As Unwinding Wednesday readers know, our 50 State Unwinding Tracker is updated regularly as we monitor new information, specifically new unwinding data, provided by states. The tracker has evolved since we released it almost a year ago – both in the number of states publicly providing unwinding information and […]
This week, we released a new analysis, written by Allexa Gardner, Joan Alker and Leo Cuello, that finds Georgia’s limited Medicaid expansion program, known as “Pathways,” is fiscally foolish and sets up a structure that discriminates against parents. Enrollment for Pathways begins on July 1st with coverage being at a later date likely September 1. […]
Report by: Maggie Clark, Georgetown University CCF, & Debbie Smith, Alabama Arise Download Full Report Introduction Alabama mothers face many barriers to good health. The state faces high maternal and infant mortality rates, high rates of uninsurance among women of childbearing age, and worsening access to maternity care providers. These problems are compounded by Alabama’s […]
Following up on President Biden’s announcement earlier this month, HHS released a proposed rule that would make DACA grantees eligible for Marketplace coverage and some Medicaid/CHIP coverage. This is an important step in the right direction – removing unnecessary and unjustified barriers to health coverage for DACA grantees – but there is more work to […]
In January 2020, 30 states charged premiums or enrollment fees to children in Medicaid or CHIP, which were suspended in 19 states during the public health emergency. Since then, six states have eliminated premiums or do not plan to resume them – California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, and North Carolina. New York also eliminated […]
The Biden Administration made an important announcement today – the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will soon release a proposed rule that would finally give Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) grantees access to health care coverage. Under current law, DACA grantees are ineligible for Medicaid, CHIP, and Marketplace coverage even though other, […]
It’s been 13 years since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law. At the time my daughter was in elementary school and I didn’t much think about what would happen to her health insurance – but now as she seems very grown up and is about to graduate from college and search for […]
On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-328).[1] The Consolidated Appropriations Act includes a number of provisions related to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This includes, among others, delinking the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement from the COVID-19 public health emergency and starting its unwinding […]
Introduction As of June 2021, over 40 million children were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP for their health insurance — the vast majority in Medicaid. From the month prior to the pandemic in February 2020, through June 2021, children’s enrollment increased by 11 percent. Now, about half of the nation’s children are covered by Medicaid […]
In 2020, Georgia submitted a waiver under Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to allow the state to exit HealthCare.gov; the Trump Administration approved the request in November of last year. Under this proposal, the 500,000 Georgians who use the federal marketplace every year to enroll in private health plans and Medicaid would […]
As readers of SayAhhh! know, the number of uninsured kids was going down for many years, but during the Trump administration starting going back up – rising to 5.7 percent child uninsured rate in 2019. While children are insured at higher rates than non-elderly adults, they still lag considerably behind seniors – who with Medicare […]
Ninety-seven percent of children living in the US are citizens, but one in four have an immigrant parent. New research from the Urban Institute shows that coverage gaps for citizen children with noncitizen parents widened relative to other children from 2016-2019, reversing much of the coverage gains these children experienced from 2013-2016. These findings are […]
July 20th – 22nd, 2021 CCF’s annual conference is geared toward state and national child health advocates and researchers. It is not open to the press. View speaker and moderator bios. View conference agenda. Tuesday, July 20 Covering All Kids 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. ET For the past several years, children’s health insurance coverage […]
