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Missouri Leads Nation In Rising Numbers Of Uninsured Children
St. Louis Public Radio By: Sarah Fentem Missouri had the highest increase in the rate of uninsured children in the nation over the two-year period that ended in 2018, according to a study from Georgetown University… It’s becoming more difficult for parents to sign up and keep families enrolled in health coverage, especially publicly funded programs such…
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CMS Gets Closer to Issuing Medicaid Block-Grant Guidance
Politico Pulse By: Dan Diamond CMS Administrator Seema Verma plans to issue a letter soon explaining how states could seek 1115 waivers to receive defined payments for adults covered by Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, your PULSE author scooped. … But the plan is guaranteed to face immediate legal challenges, with advocates already staking out arguments against…
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Trump Poised To Kick Off Election-Year Fight Over Medicaid
The Hill By: Nathaniel Weixel The Trump administration is poised to kick off a major partisan feud over Medicaid in 2020, as officials are reportedly planning to soon introduce a way for states to block grant Medicaid money. The guidance, which The Wall Street Journal said could be released as early as this month, will…
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In Texas, Thousands of Kids Lose Medicaid Coverage Each Month
Texas Observer By: Sophie Novack It’s becoming a familiar scene across Texas: a parent brings her child to the doctor for a checkup. She signs in at the front desk. Only then does she learn that her child has been kicked off her health insurance—a casualty of missing paperwork and hoops she didn’t know existed.…
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MACPAC Watching CMMI Model On Maternal Care For Moms With SUDs
Inside Health Policy By: Chelsea Cirruzo Congress’ Medicaid advisors are carefully watching a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation model to see how it improves maternal health for mothers with substance use disorders as it gets underway this year, and suggested they might weigh in to highlight the authority states already have to reshape their…
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Comments to CMS on Proposed Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Regulation (MFAR)
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families submitted the following comments to federal CMS on the proposed Medicaid Fiscal Accountability Regulation (MFAR). Georgetown-CCF-Comments-to-CMS-MFAR-CMS–2393–P
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Some Big Health Care Policy Changes Are Hiding In The Federal Spending Package
NPR By: NPR Staff Congress is set to pass a $1.4 trillion spending package this week, which President Trump has said he’ll sign. The legislation includes policy changes and funding increases that public health advocates are celebrating, as well as the permanent repeal of three key taxes that were designed to pay for Obamacare —…
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Why are so many children losing health care? Yes, politics
Boston Globe By: Joan Alker Imagine taking a sick child to the doctor or the emergency room only to find that your insurance has lapsed. That is happening to thousands of families whose children are covered by Medicaid as they are required to submit more paperwork, verify their income more frequently and comply with unreasonable deadlines they don’t…
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South Carolina Is the 10th State to Impose Medicaid Work Requirements
New York Times By: Abby Goodnough Although the courts have so far blocked President Trump’s attempts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, his administration announced on Thursday that it would allow a 10th state, South Carolina, to condition Medicaid eligibility for many poor adults on proving that they work or engage in other activities, like volunteering… “You’re going…
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Young children lost health insurance faster in Missouri than in any other state
Springfield News Leader By: Austin Huguelet Georgetown University researchers had some bad news for the Show-Me State this past week. In a study published Monday, researchers found the percentage of young children without health insurance rose faster in Missouri than in any other state from 2016-2018, putting the state in the vanguard of a troubling nationwide…
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South Carolina Punishes Poor Parents for Christmas
New York Magazine By: Sarah Jones Days after the Trump administration finalized a proposal that will kick hundreds of thousands of people off food stamps, the state of South Carolina delivered its own special holiday present to the poor. On Thursday afternoon, Seema Verma, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, joined…
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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,…