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South Carolina becomes first nonexpansion state with a Medicaid work requirement
Modern Healthcare By: Harris Meyer South Carolina will become the first state to apply Medicaid work requirements to parents of minor children with incomes under 100% of the federal poverty level, after the CMS approved the state’s waiver request Thursday… South Carolina’s waiver approval may be even more vulnerable to a legal challenge than those in…
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Column: CMS Approves South Carolina Medicaid Waiver
Los Angeles Times By: Michael Hiltzik Seema Verma, the federal official in charge of Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, has blasted into the limelight after more than two years operating in the shadows of the Department of Health and Human Services… On Thursday, she appeared in Greenville, S.C., shoulder to shoulder with South Carolina…
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Amid legal roadblocks, CMS clears South Carolina Medicaid work mandates
Healthcare Dive By: Rebecca Pifer Though the Trump administration heralds work requirements as a key to lift low-income Americans out of poverty, critics warn they will drop the most vulnerable from a safety net program meant to ensure access to care… According to a January report from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children…
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Centene quietly lobbying Congress to let states partially expand Medicaid
Healthcare Dive By: Samantha Liss Centene, the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care provider, wants Congress to change the eligibility requirements around Medicaid, the government-sponsored safety net program that covers one in five low-income Americans.”It would be a very major change. I certainly don’t see that happening. It’s opening up the ACA and as we know…
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Rate of uninsured Ohio children nearly doubled in two years
WCPO Cincinnati By: Mariel Carbone More than 41,000 kids under the age of six are uninsured in the state of Ohio, and that number has been increasing over the last two years… “If you don’t access the necessary healthcare, it could impact them for a lifetime,” said Angela Robinson, outreach and enrollment manager with the…
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Uninsured rate for Texas’ youngest children jumps, report says
Statesman By: Julie Chang The percentage of Texas’ youngest children without health insurance has increased since 2016, according to a report released Wednesday. In 2018, 8.3% of Texas children under age 6 — a total of 198,014 — were uninsured. The rate has grown by 1 percentage point, or about 23,000 children, since 2016, according…
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Concern grows as rate of uninsured Missouri children keeps climbing
St. Louis Post-Dispatch By: Michele Munz Child advocates are concerned about a new nationwide report that places babies, toddlers and preschoolers in Missouri at the top of an alarming health care trend. Over the past two years, Missouri saw the biggest increase in the country in the rate of uninsured young children, according to a…
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Could 2020 bring full Medicaid expansion to Utah?
Deseret News By: Wendy Leonard Utah voters approved a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid, but Utah lawmakers said the plan was financially unsustainable and delivered a different plan, including four phases. The first two have been rejected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the grounds that the entire Affordable Care Act is…
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More and More Very Young Children Across the Nation Lack Health Insurance. Guess How Texas Fares.
Dallas Observer By: Lucas Manfield Nearly a fifth of the nation’s youngest uninsured children live in Texas, a stark reminder that the state has some of the most restrictive policies in the nation governing healthcare benefits for its most vulnerable residents. More than 8% of Texan children under the age of 6 are not insured,…
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#ListenToBlackWomen: Maternal and infant health care advocates tell North Carolina
North Carolina Health News By: Anna Blythe The racial disparities are more pronounced in North Carolina than much of the country, both for maternal health and infant mortality rates… Adam Searing, a research professor at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, pointed out that Medicaid expansion states have reduced the percentage of uninsured…
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The Extraordinary Danger of Being Pregnant and Uninsured in Texas
ProPublica & Vox By: Nina Martin and Julia Belluz From 2012 through 2015, at least 382 pregnant women and new mothers died in Texas from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, according to the most recent data available from the Department of State Health Services; since then, hundreds more have likely perished…Texas is among the handful that still…
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Rate of Iowa Kids Lacking Health Insurance Inches Up
KMA Land – Iowa News Service By: Roz Brown The number of Iowa children without health care insurance is slowing inching up – a red flag, according to children’s advocates who track the impact on families… Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, says the trend of fewer children having…
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CCF Submits Comments on Harmful Trump Administration Medicaid Financing and Supplemental Payment Rule
CCF has submitted public comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed “Fiscal Accountability” rule which could significantly change how states finance their share of the cost of Medicaid programs and how states provide supplemental payments to hospitals, nursing homes, physicians and other health care providers. As my recent Health Affairs blog…
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In Medicaid Expansion States, Fewer Young Children Go Uninsured
Thanks to developments since the start of the new year, this post can start with some good news for young children: three more states have made progress toward expanding Medicaid. Last week, Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican Sen. Jim Denning announced plans to move forward to with Medicaid expansion when the legislative session…
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Fact Checking CMS Administrator’s Claim on Outreach and Enrollment Efforts for Kids
In a recent interview on the PBS News Hour, Kaiser Health News reporter Sarah Varney asked CMS Administrator Seema Verma about steps the administration is taking to address the troubling increase in the number of uninsured children and its connection to the decrease in child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP. Readers of SayAhhh! are already…
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Responding to Trump Administration’s Troubling Medicaid Financing and Supplemental Payment Rule
On November 18, 2019, the Trump Administration issued a proposed Medicaid “Fiscal Accountability” rule that seriously threatens to upend state budgets and reduce beneficiaries’ access to needed care. The proposed rule, if finalized, could thus harm Medicaid beneficiaries, including children and families, as well as their health care providers, in most states. As Cindy Mann…
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The New Year Brings Good News to Uninsured Idahoans; Providers are Ready to Go
With all of the challenges facing the health care world these days, I decided to write my first blog of 2020 about some good news happening in Idaho. As of January 1st, over 50,000 Idahoans were enrolled in Medicaid expansion coverage finally bringing to fruition the ballot initiative passed handily by voters in November 2018.…
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How Medicaid Expansion Improved the Life of Idaho Mother Raising Two Children with Disabilities on Her Own
[Editor’s Note: Anita Sackuvich, a single mother with two disabled children who has been living without health insurance, joined Close the Gap Idaho at a press conference on January 6, 2020 to share her excitement about enrolling in coverage through Idaho’s Medicaid expansion. After facing mounting medical debt from a lifesaving surgery, Anita finally has health…
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South Carolina Becomes First State to Impose Harmful Work Requirements Primarily on Poor Parents
I had held out a little sliver of hope that the Trump Administration would not cross this line but today those hopes were extinguished when CMS Administrator Verma traveled to South Carolina to personally deliver the news to South Carolina Governor McMaster that his state would be the first in the nation to apply a…
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Leading Children’s Health and Medical Groups Respond to South Carolina Medicaid Waiver
Work requirements have been proven to be ineffective and would cause parents to lose coverage. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Defense Fund, First Focus on Children, Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, March of Dimes and the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners issue the following joint statement in response to the approval…
