Say Ahhh!
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Unwinding Wednesday #22: Updates to 50-State Tracker with One Month Until Unwinding Start Date
We are officially in final unwinding countdown with exactly one month until states are allowed to begin Medicaid terminations. In preparation, we have been updating our 50-state tracker with new information including revised state unwinding plans and state renewal reports that were submitted to CMS. Since the 50-state tracker first went live in September 2022,…
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Center for Renewing America Budget Plan Would Cut Federal Medicaid Spending by One-Third, Repeal Affordable Care Act’s Coverage Expansions
According to recent media reports, Russell Vought, the former Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump Administration who is now President of the Center for Renewing America, is a key advisor to House Republican leaders for the severe budget cuts they should seek as the price for agreeing to raise the…
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Federal Medicaid Expansion Incentives Offer Another Tool for States to Continue Coverage as Pandemic-Era Medicaid Rules End
Our new factsheet, “State Fiscal Incentives for Medicaid Expansion Continue after the End of Public Health Emergency” lays out the substantial federal financial incentives for Medicaid expansion remaining available to non-expansion states after April 1, 2023 when states begin the process of ending Medicaid continuous coverage pandemic protections, which allowed beneficiaries to remain enrolled for…
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Unwinding Wednesday #21: FCC Gives Green Light for MCOs and Other State Medicaid Contractors to Use Text Messaging
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has encouraged states to communicate with enrollees through non-mail means, and text messages and automated calls are an efficient and cost-effective way to contact consumers. But there were concerns about compliance with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was enacted to protect consumers from certain practices that…
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Medicaid Managed Care Financial Results for 2022: Another Big Year for the Big Five
The 2022 earnings reports for the “Big Five”—CVS Health (Aetna), Centene, Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), Molina, and United Health Group—are now in. As expected, combined Medicaid enrollment for the “Big Five” increased during 2022 by 3.3 million to 43.2 million, an increase of 8.2 percent (Table 1). (If children are enrolled in “Big Five” MCOs…
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Webinar Series: School Medicaid Matters 2023
Over the next couple of months, CCF will be collaborating with the Healthy Schools Campaign and Community Catalyst to host a series of webinars focused on opportunities to strengthen the role of Medicaid in schools. The series kicked off earlier this month with a webinar featuring former CMS Administrator Vikki Wacchino, who walked through what…
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CCF, Pediatricians Urge State Leaders to Shield Children from Losing Medicaid Coverage
State-by-State Report Shows Medicaid Now Covers More Than Half of U.S. Children This week we teamed up with our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics to release a report and discuss the high stakes for children when the Medicaid continuous coverage protection expires. Medicaid and CHIP now cover 54% of children in the United…
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Unwinding Wednesday #20: All States Must Submit Their Medicaid Continuous Coverage Unwinding Renewal Reports by Today!
Today’s the day! All states are required to submit their state renewal reports to CMS today. States that initiated their first batch of renewals in February were expected to submit their reports on February 1. And all other states are required to submit the reports today. What are the state renewal reports? To better…
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Unwinding Wednesday #19: What Can Application Processing Times Tell Us About State Readiness for the Unwinding?
In the past, I’ve blogged a lot about the Medicaid and CHIP performance indicators that states have been required to report since 2014. Among those indicators, states must report the share of MAGI-based (i.e., non-disabled, non-elderly Medicaid groups) applications completed in five buckets: less than 24 hours (also known as real-time determination),…
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Medicaid Managed Care: A Promising New Point of Accountability
In most states, a central challenge for Medicaid is holding managed care organizations (MCOs) accountable for their performance for enrollees, especially children and families. Medicaid MCOs are collectively responsible for the health of tens of millions (with an “m”) of Medicaid beneficiaries and the proper use of hundreds of billions (with a “b”) of federal…
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CMS Announces Important Consumer Protection for People Losing Medicaid/CHIP
States will begin the process of redetermining Medicaid eligibility for over 80 million people across the country very soon, and some states may be starting the process today. People will not lose Medicaid coverage until April 1 at the earliest, but once disenrollments begin, the number of people losing Medicaid coverage could skyrocket overnight. Some…
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Unwinding Wednesday #18: What Does the End of COVID Emergency Declarations Mean for Medicaid/CHIP?
On Monday, the Biden Administration announced that it would end the COVID-19 national emergency and public health emergency declarations effective May 11th. Some folks may have stopped paying attention or holding their breath in anticipation of the announcement of the end of the PHE once the Medicaid continuous enrollment protection was…
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House Republican Study Committee Budget Plan Includes Draconian Medicaid Cuts
House Republican leaders continue to threaten debt default unless the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats accede to their demands for severe budget cuts. So far, House Republicans have not spelled out the specific budget cuts they are seeking as the price for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling, including to Medicaid. But last year’s Republican…
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The ACA’s Preventive Services Benefit Is in Jeopardy: What Can States Do to Preserve Access?
By Justin Giovannelli, Sabrina Corlette, and Madeline O’Brien, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms A federal judge is poised to gut one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA requires that most private health plans cover preventive services, such as certain cancer screenings and immunizations, without imposing cost sharing on…
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Hundreds of Thousands of Children Could Lose Coverage in Florida Alone as U.S. Approaches High Stakes Medicaid Unwinding
As readers of SayAhhh! know, Congress has given the green light to states to begin checking eligibility for all Medicaid beneficiaries who have been protected from disenrollment by federal law since the Families First Covid Relief Act passed in March 2020. Terminations can begin on April 1, 2023; states have a year to complete the…
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Mothers’ Mental Health Challenges Predated COVID-19, Medicaid Policy and Other Solutions Needed, Report Finds
American families with children faced significant challenges during the pandemic due to school closures, lost jobs and isolation, and mothers reported higher rates of anxiety than fathers as they took on more caregiving responsibilities or even left their paid jobs. A full 50 percent of women ages 18 to 64 reported needing mental health services…
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New Data Underscores Need to Catch up on Routine Childhood Vaccinations
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released updated data on vaccination coverage among kindergartners, showing a continued decline in the share of children with the recommended doses of routine childhood vaccines needed to prevent the spread of harmful diseases. The report includes data on vaccination rates by state for four vaccines: measles, mumps,…
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Unwinding Wednesday #17: It’s Imperative for States to Use the 2023 Federal Poverty Levels During the Unwinding
The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) has released the 2023 federal poverty levels (FPL). As expected, there was a notable increase in the poverty threshold stemming from inflation that will help families keep pace with rising costs. On average, the FPLs rose by about 8 percent, ranging from 7.3…
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Funding for Community Health Workers Authorized in Consolidated Appropriations Act – How could this help children and families?
We’ve written about several of the exciting health provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 that was signed into law in December here on Say Ahhh!: to recap, Joan Alker wrote about the permanent mandatory 12-month continuous eligibility requirement and other important provisions, Tricia Brooks detailed the new guardrails and transparency requirements as states…
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Implementing Changes to Medicaid Coverage for Former Foster Youth Could Be a Long, Bumpy Path but States Have Easier Option Available
One of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s health plan until age 26 – would neglect a vulnerable group were it not for another ACA provision extending Medicaid to former foster youth (FFY). Unlike other young adults, youth transitioning out of foster…
