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Texas Has the Highest Uninsured Rate in the Country. Lawmakers Haven’t Addressed it This Session.
Texas Observer By: Sophie Novack Texas has the highest overall uninsured rate in the country, the highest rate of uninsured kids and the highest rate of uninsured women of childbearing age. Yet the Legislature is on track to wrap up for the next two years without passing bills to expand coverage… Meanwhile, a study released Wednesday found that Texas has…
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Trump Administration Leverages Medical Loss Ratio Requirements to Help Address Problem of Drug “Spread Pricing” in Medicaid Managed Care
In a welcome move, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued highly technical guidance on May 15, 2019 which could help address the inappropriate use of “spread pricing” by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in Medicaid managed care. Many managed care plans contract with PBMs to administer the pharmacy benefit for their enrollees. But…
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New MACPAC Members Named
May 21, 2019 Inside Health Policy Melanie Bella, the founding director of the Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office at CMS, was named on Monday (May 20) as the new chair of the congressional Medicaid advisory commission, and two new members — health care lawyer Tom Barker and Georgetown University professor Tricia Brooks — were appointed to the…
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New Research Finds Medicaid Gains Help Lead to Healthier Mothers and Babies
(Following is the press release we issued today on a new report “Medicaid Expansion Fills the Gaps in Maternal Health Coverage Leading to Healthier Mothers and Babies” by Adam Searing and Donna Cohen Ross.) Medicaid helps fill the gaps in maternal health coverage and leads to healthier babies and mothers, according to a new report…
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Georgetown CCF’s Tricia Brooks Appointed to MACPAC
We at Georgetown CCF are so thrilled to announce that today the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) appointed Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Senior Fellow Tricia Brooks to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC). The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009…
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Social Media Toolkit for Maternal Health Report
Social Media Posts A new @georgetownccf report finds Medicaid expansion helps sharply reduce the uninsured rate for women of childbearing age, reduces infant mortality, and helps women get better care before they become pregnant. #MaternalHealthMatters https://bit.ly/2JPfa9N New study finds Medicaid expansion plays a crucial role in reducing maternal mortality and infant mortality rates, and…
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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. This is especially true for women in their childbearing years, when a pregnancy means having health coverage is even more important. The stakes are high as the care a woman receives during pregnancy is critical to her own health, as well as to the…
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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…
