Resources
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Medicaid and State Budgets: Looking at the Facts
Medicaid continues to make up a large share of state budgets, but its role is far more nuanced than is frequently portrayed. This series of fact sheets is designed to provide a short overview of the role of Medicaid in state budgets, the sources of spending, and details on how much each state spends. The…
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New Issue Brief Looks at Medicaid’s Role in State Budgets
By Martha Heberlein State budgets continue to be a hot issue. As states are grappling with depressed revenues and searching for ways to balance their budgets, some have turned to Medicaid to help fill the gap. But, as with most debates about how much things cost and how money is spent, some of the arguments don’t…
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What Conservative States Want: Health Care for Children
By Christine Sinatra, Texans Care for Children A couple of years ago in a seminar for children’s health advocates, a pollster shared some promising new national data: about 9 out of 10 voters said they support public children’s health insurance programs. Up went the hands of those of us in the room from the red…
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West Virginia to Implement CHIP Expansion
By Martha Heberlein Amid all the turmoil surrounding “flexibility” in Medicaid and ongoing state budget crises (not to mention the never-ending budget debate in DC), a move forward for children’s coverage in West Virginia has gone largely unnoticed. In 2006, the state enacted an expansion from 200% to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)…
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Health Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Mandatory Spending in Affordable Care Act
You need to look no further than the uncertainty about FY 2011 funding being hobbled together through a series of short-term continuing resolutions and threats of a government shutdown to understand why mandatory funding is necessary to create a stable funding stream for essential programs that improve the health and well-being of America’s children and…
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New Tools for New Times: Using Cell Phones to Help Families Enroll and Stay Enrolled in Health Insurance
Mobile Technology: Smart Tools to Increase Participation in Health Coverage.
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ACA Can Build Upon CHIPRA Success by Improving Maternity Care
By Amanda Jezek, March of Dimes Health reform has the potential to provide tremendous opportunities to expand health insurance coverage, but what many people do not realize is that the new law also makes significant investments designed to improve the quality of health care — particularly in Medicaid. These provisions are critical in making sure…
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The Massachusetts and Utah Health Insurance Exchanges: Lessons Learned
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires states to set-up health insurance exchanges. Once up and running, exchanges are expected to connect approximately 29 million people to coverage. Their design should help individuals and small businesses shop for and purchase health insurance, access premium and cost-sharing subsidies, and facilitate health plan competition based…
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What did the President Just Say??
On Monday, while addressing the nation’s Governors, President Obama endorsed bipartisan legislation introduced by Senators Wyden, Brown and Landrieu that moves up the date that states can apply for so-called “State Innovation Waivers” from 2017 to 2014. Waivers come in many shapes and sizes and can be quite confusing. (Just watch Members of the House…
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House Energy and Commerce Hearing Light on Substance
By Jocelyn Guyer The new Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee invited three of the nation’s governors to testify at a hearing entitled “The Consequences of Obamacare: Impact on Medicaid and State Health Care Reform.” As the title of the hearing suggests, the event was heavy on posturing and politics and light on illuminating…
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Which States Are So Eager for “Flexibility”?
By Martha Heberlein Back in January, a group of current and former Republican Governors sent a letter to Congress asking for “flexibility” to ignore the stability protections in the Affordable Care Act. Today, the Energy and Commerce Committee is holding a hearing that will focus, in part, on this request. Let’s look a little more closely…
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MEDICAID MATTERS: Return of the Medicaid Block-Granting Debate
The discussion of block-granting Medicaid has returned to the national health policy stage. This weekend, at the annual winter meeting of the nation’s governors, various governors resurrected the issue arguing that states need more flexibility than they currently have to fit their state’s budget and health care needs. Because of the populations affected and the…
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Medicaid Block Grant Would Leave States Holding the Bag
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities In a previous post, I explained why block-granting Medicaid or otherwise capping its funding is no solution to rising costs. It’s also a really bad deal for states, as a report CBPP released on February 23 explains. A block grant would shift significant financial risks and costs…
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Dairyland Dust-Up Goes Beyond Worker Rights: Medicaid Power Shift Also Gaining Attention
By Bob Jacobson, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families The eyes of the nation have turned to Wisconsin as an epic struggle drags on between Governor Scott Walker on one side and unions representing public employees and their supporters on the other. For readers who have been on vacation for the last few weeks: Gov.…
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CMS Provides Guidance to States on ACA’s Stability Protection Provisions
By Jocelyn Guyer Today, CMS issued a letter and a frequently asked questions document that outlines how the Administration will work with states to implement the Affordable Care Act’s stability protections. As readers of Say Ahhh! know, a number of Republican Governors have been pressuring HHS to relax these stability protection or “maintenance of effort”…
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Tapping State Ingenuity to Streamline Access to Benefits
Today, families in need of child care assistance, health coverage and food assistance often have to apply to three different agencies, providing pretty much the same information and documents to each of them. All the while, different eligibility workers handle this information to determine the family’s eligibility separately for each program. Placing such redundant and…
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HHS Announces Insurance Rate Review Grants
The Department of Health and Human Services just announced $200 million in grants to states to enhance their capacity to review health insurance premium increases. This is good news for families struggling with health insurance premium increases year after year. As Michael Miller of Community Catalyst put it during the HHS conference call, “families’ incomes…
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Eliminating Medicaid and CHIP Stability Provisions (MoE): What’s at Stake for Children and Families
The stability in Medicaid and CHIP can be directly attributed to the short-term fiscal relief and the federal requirements that states maintain their eligibility rules and enrollment procedures until broader health reform is implemented. If the stability provisions are rescinded, states could eliminate Medicaid for anyone who is covered at state option, as well as…
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Health Insurance for 1 in 3 Put at Risk if Stability Protections Removed
By Jocelyn Guyer and Martha Heberlein We’ve just finished up a new report that looks at what might happen if the Medicaid and CHIP stability protections are rescinded, opening the door for states to cut off coverage for kids, seniors, people with disabilities, and other low-income adults. It isn’t a pretty picture – about a…
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How did Children Fare in President’s Budget?
(Ed. Note: Budget season kicked off last week with the release of President Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposal. The document outlines the President’s vision for the future by setting funding priorities. Say Ahhh! asked Bruce Lesley of First Focus to share his thoughts on how children and families fared in the President’s budget.) By Bruce…