Resources
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Some Questions Answered: State-by-State Spending Estimates Under the Medicaid Expansion
By Jocelyn Guyer Yesterday the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Urban Institute released some long-awaited state-by-state estimates of the impact on adult coverage of the Medicaid expansion included in health reform, along with estimates of the state and federal cost of the expansion. The new report provides some valuable new estimates…
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Arizona Takes First Step to Restore Children’s Health Insurance
By Matt Jewett, Children’s Action Alliance of Arizona Not a lot of good news has come out of Arizona this year. Amidst leading the country in job losses, selling our state Capitol to raise money (we’re leasing it back), and a divisive immigration debate gaining national attention, we also became the first state ever to…
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Covering Kids & Families Coalitions Know Important Lessons for Health Reform
In 1997, just months before Congress enacted the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced a national grant program called “Covering Kids.” The concept was to overcome hurdles to Medicaid enrollment and retention through outreach, policy and procedural simplifications and coordination of coverage between programs. With the creation of CHIP,…
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Health Reform’s Maternity Coverage – Best Gift an Expectant Mother Could Receive
By Amanda Jezek, March of Dimes Health reform is giving pregnant women throughout the U.S. a far more valuable package than anything they could ever unwrap at a baby shower — access to maternity coverage. Coverage for maternity care is crucial because, without it, women face much more difficulty in obtaining needed health services. Women…
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Federal Regulations Issued on Dependent Coverage for Adult Children
Coverage of young adults up to 26 years of age on a parent’s insurance plan is one of the most popular provisions of the new health reform law and an early win for children and families. This week, three federal agencies released joint interim final regulations on this provision. The rules confirm that all individual and group health plans,…
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Financing New Medicaid Coverage Under Health Reform: The Role of the Federal Government and States
Under health reform, Medicaid will be expanded to cover nearly all people under age 65 with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty line. This issue brief examines how the federal government and the states are expected to split responsibility for financing the expanded Medicaid coverage. For any given state, the share financed by…
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A Bit of Clarity on Who Gets What Matching Rate
Medicaid will continue to be a cornerstone of coverage under health reform, with an additional 16 million people joining the program. A key question that many are asking (especially state officials facing tight budgets) is how the cost of this Medicaid expansion will be financed. Let’s start with the big picture – overall, CBO estimates…
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Congressional Leaders Urge HHS to Issue Strong MOE Guidance
It was a great victory for children and families when Congress included a maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement in health reform so states wouldn’t cutback on Medicaid and CHIP coverage before affordable coverage was available through the state Exchanges. Now, as with so many issues in health care reform, the way it works out for…
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Health Reform Web Portal Is On Its Way
By Martha Heberlein Mark your calendars – on July 1, 2010, HHS plans on launching the new health reform web portal to provide state-level information about affordable health coverage options. In anticipation of the launch, regulations were released today detailing what information the portal will include and how the data will be collected. The portal will…
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Graduates Have One Less Thing to Worry About
Last week my son turned in his final paper and defended his senior thesis, his last acts as a college senior. In a few short weeks, he’ll join the 3 million young adults graduating from college this year. Fortunately, this year’s crop of grads (and their parents) will have one less thing to worry about…
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#4 BEING THE FINAL PART (REALLY) OF THE “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE ” SERIES
Where we left off: I was musing that the new CHIPRA options to do premium assistance may not prove to be all that much more attractive than the existing ones. Some states may reconfigure their programs (if they can) to qualify for the performance bonus. So far there hasn’t been a rush to pick up…
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State Commissions: A Few States Take Their First Steps Towards Implementing Reform
By Martha Heberlein While the federal government still has a great deal on its plate in terms of implementing health reform (we at CCF are eagerly awaiting every bit of guidance and regulation CMS can throw at us!), many key tasks now move to the states. Should we set up a new high-risk pool? What…
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Addressing the “What’s In It for Me” and “What’s In It for Others” Questions on Health Reform
About 55 percent of Americans say they are confused about the new health reform law and more than half say they don’t yet have enough information to understand how it will affect them personally according to Kaiser’s latest tracking poll. As was clearly evident during the health reform debate, people take their health coverage very…
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BEING THE THIRD (BUT NOT FINAL) PART OF “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE”
So in the almost final installment of my musings on premium assistance, I am going to cover two issues and then wrap up this scintillating series (I hope – this might get toooooo long and we may have to go to Part 4 which would ruin my whole LOTR analogy.). The first question is about…
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BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE”
Welcome to Part 2 of my musings about the state of premium assistance. Part 1 left us with the teaser that CHIPRA includes new premium assistance options, which the new health reform law incorporates and expands to all Medicaid beneficiaries as of January 1, 2014. So let’s take some time to explore where things stand…
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Whither Premium Assistance??? (Part 1)
I started studying premium assistance programs in Medicaid and CHIP a decade ago with a large dose of skepticism. The idea of buying private coverage with public dollars when it is more expensive and typically covers fewer benefits than Medicaid struck me as a bad deal for beneficiaries and taxpayers alike. In many cases this…
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States Find New Electronic Data Match Effective and Efficient in Confirming Citizenship
One of the exciting new options provided by the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) is the ability of states to use an existing electronic data exchange with the Social Security Administration (SSA) to document citizenship. All states have entered into agreements with the SSA to use this new capability starting January 1, 2010.…
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CBPP Launches Blog
Our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have joined the blogosphere and they have a lot to say. The blog was launched at 8:30 a.m. and they had already posted three entries by lunchtime. Those of you familiar with CBPP know what a bright and talented group of experts they have on…
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How Much Will This Cost Us? Key Questions to Ask About State Estimates on Health Reform Costs
By Martha Heberlein Throughout the debate on health reform, states have asked, “how much will this cost us?” Now that health reform is the law of the land, several have put out their own estimates. However, as there is no agreed upon independent arbiter to tell us what states will be spending – sadly, CBO…
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Early Wins for Children and Families in Health Care Reform
While many of the sweeping changes to insurance industry practices and other major provisions do not go into effect until January 1, 2014, there are some important early wins in health reform for children and their families. This issue brief reviews those early wins in some detail.