Resources
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Florida’s Progress on Children’s Health Would Unravel if Plan is Approved
Just last week we released a report commending Florida for making significant progress in reducing the number of uninsured children between 2008 and 2010. Today, we are releasing a report that shows Florida will unravel much of that progress if allowed to go forward with proposed changes to its Medicaid program that include the imposition…
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“Medicaid.Gov:” A New Resource for Medicaid Stakeholders
Medicaid stakeholders have a new resource to mine in “Medicaid.Gov.” CMS opened the mine on Monday for prospecting and you’re bound to find, through the site’s updated search functionality, some of those elusive nuggets of information previously not available or buried so deep within the old CMS website that no amount of blasting could unearth.…
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Improving Coverage for Children Under Health Reform Will Require Maintaining Current Eligibility Standards For Medicaid and CHIP
When the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is fully implemented, it will extend health insurance coverage to many adult Americans who currently lack it. It is not known, however, how the health reform legislation will affect children and parents who would otherwise be uninsured. Based on this analysis, health reform has the potential to cut…
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ACA Should Bring Insured Rate for Children Up to 95%
Ever since the Affordable Care Act passed, people have been calling us to ask “What does the law mean for kids and their families?” To my great dismay, we were completely unable to answer this question even though we are, after all, the “Center for Children and Families.” The only thing we could accurately say…
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UPDATE: Arizona – A KidsCare Band-Aid
By Martha Heberlein We’ve written before about Arizona’s response to the recession–substantial budget cuts and the only enrollment freeze in the nation in its CHIP program, KidsCare. Instituted almost two years ago, there are now 129,000 kids on the waiting list for access to affordable health coverage. A new (but somewhat familiar) proposal has emerged to…
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States Still Recuperating, Outlook is Positive
By Tara Mancini The National Association of State Budget Officers just released their Fall 2011 Fiscal Survey of States. We have become accustomed to reading about Medicaid as one of the big-ticket items in state spending. While some detractors have reasoned that increased spending is emblematic of a broken program, NASBO gets it correct by…
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More Options for Eligibility Determination Potentially Crack the Seamless System
This week, CMS released a Q & A on State-Exchange Implementation with new information on several topics, which are described below. Of concern and worth highlighting is the disappointing departure from the proposed rules by now allowing states that choose not to implement a state-based exchange to retain control over Medicaid and CHIP eligibility. The Notice…
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Despite Economic Challenges, Progress Continues: Children’s Health Insurance Coverage in the United States from 2008-2010
In this paper, health insurance data from the Census Bureau’s annual “American Community Survey” was analyzed in order to get a more accurate depiction of children’s coverage. Even though the number of children living in poverty has increased almost 19 percent over a three-year period, the number of children without health insurance declined 14 percent–…
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Medicaid & CHIP Bring Uninsured Rate for Children Down 14%
Even as unemployment and child poverty has grown, the uninsured rate for children has decreased by 14% nationwide, according to the report we just released today at back-to-back Capitol Hill briefings. It was great to share this good news at House and Senate briefings with overflowing crowds. The briefings were sponsored by the “Children’s Health…
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A Compass for America’s Health Care Navigators
By Suzie Shupe, California Coverage & Health Initiatives The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance exchange marketplaces offer the promise of connecting millions of uninsured Americans with the health coverage and care they need. And by strengthening Medicaid, millions more will be able to get care. It is an historic opportunity, but also an unprecedented…
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Health Insurance Premium Increases Outpace Wages
Employer-based health insurance costs have increased three times faster than wages since the beginning of the decade. About 62% of those under age 65 live in a state where average health insurance premiums exceed 20% of the median income. In 2010, the average total premium for a family of four was $13,871, an increase of…
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Fuzzy Math: Treasury Department says kids don’t count when determining whether family insurance is affordable?
By Kristen Golden Testa, The Children’s Partnership Since when is 14,000 no different than 5,000? When the U.S. Treasury Department estimates the affordability of a family’s health insurance. If it goes uncorrected, their fuzzy math may deny affordable health coverage to 270,000 Californians–122,000 of whom are children. While premiums continue to rise across the board,…
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Public Health Insurance as Poverty Reducer?
By Martha Heberlein I wanted to share an interesting tidbit that I couldn’t squeeze into my earlier blog on the supplemental poverty measure (SPM). As I mentioned, one of the new parameters included in the SPM is out-of-pocket spending on medical expenses. Well, if you look at those in poverty under the two definitions, it’s…
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11 Tips to Help Children Get Enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP
By Judy Darnell, United Ways of California One of United Ways of California’s goals is to improve the health of children and adults. We know that a lack of health care coverage often means that primary care is an unattainable luxury. Yet primary care is so important in preventing or treating illness before it becomes…
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Using Mobile Phones to Help Families Access Vital Medicaid Coverage
By Lisa Han, The Childrens Partnership Recent data shows that people of color and low-income populations are adopting mobile technology at a rapid pace and are increasingly using mobile tools to access the Internet. These tools enable new ways of interacting with the government and enrolling in public services. Instead of standing in line at…
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Texas Has Highest % of Uninsured Children in Nation – Let’s Change That
By Kelli King-Jackson, Texas Children’s Defense Fund “Now we see everything that’s going wrong with the world and those who lead it. We just feel like we don’t have the means to rise above and beat it. So we keep waiting – waiting on the world to change.” John Mayer – Waiting on the…
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Expanding Access to Care for Young Adults Through the Right Outreach and Enrollment Strategies
By Brian Burrell, Young Invincibles The Affordable Care Act (ACA) marked a historic expansion of access to health care for many people, and the federal and state exchanges will be a large part of that reform. Ideally, low- and middle-income consumers will buy insurance with subsidies through online health benefit exchanges, where they can compare…
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Talking Enrollment in the Windy City
By Jenny Sullivan, Enroll America My colleague Ani and I had the pleasure of attending the Second National Children’s Health Insurance Summit earlier this month in Chicago. The gathering, hosted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), was the official kick-off for the second round of outreach and enrollment grants that CMS awarded to 39…
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Children’s Health is a National Priority
By Patrick McIntyre, United Way When it comes to the health of our nation, United Way cares about ensuring that everyone has health insurance, that folks eat well, and that Americans remain active and energized. Specifically for children, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program provide vital health care to children whose families don’t receive…
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Exciting News About ARKIDS and Medicaid
By Elisabeth Wright Burak, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families Here’s a sneak peak at an exciting trend we’ve just uncovered in recent insurance coverage data. In a nutshell: the number of uninsured kids in Arkansas is dropping, even as families continue to feel the effects of the recession. As lawmakers debate the future of Medicaid…