Say Ahhh!
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Federal Focus on Behavioral Health Crisis Care
You may be thinking that we’ve been writing a lot about behavioral health on Say Ahhh! lately. Well, you’re right – and there’s more! For starters, last week, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released new National Guidelines for Child and Youth Behavioral Health Crisis Care, complementing other recent resources such as…
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Are Medicaid Enrollees Aware that Medicaid Renewals Will Restart Soon?
A new brief by the Urban Institute indicates that nearly two-thirds of adults (62 percent) who are covered by or have a Medicaid-enrolled family member are unaware that Medicaid renewals will be restarting in the future. Of those who had heard at least a little about the resumption of renewals, the largest source of information…
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Unwinding Wednesday #11: No 60-day Notice on the Unwinding; PHE Expected to Be Extended Until April 2023
[Editor’s Note: The end-of-year bipartisan funding agreement released on December 20 would delink the continuous coverage requirement from the HHS Secretary’s declaration of a public health emergency and start the Medicaid “unwinding” process on April 1. The agreement includes 12 months of continuous coverage for children and other provisions designed to protect individuals eligible for…
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States Leading the Way on Connecting All Children with Health Coverage – Will Congress Follow?
According to the Urban Institute, over half of the remaining uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) but unenrolled. About a third of uninsured children are ineligible for Medicaid or CHIP because their family income exceeds the eligibility thresholds. Another 10% are ineligible for Medicaid/CHIP because of their immigration…
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Transparency in Medicaid Managed Care: The Power of the California Procurement Database
The Illinois Answers Project has just published a must-read piece of investigative reporting: “Insurance Giant Failed Foster Kids with Inadequate Care.” It raises a number of disturbing questions about the way children in foster care are being treated in the state’s Medicaid managed care program. About the performance of a Centene subsidiary that has contracted…
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South Dakota Voters Pass Medicaid Expansion. What Happens Next?
South Dakota voters followed the pattern of six other states and voted this week to expand Medicaid, extending affordable health care to more than 40,000 adults largely working in jobs without health coverage like hospitality, food service, and construction. In taking this action, South Dakota now joins 39 other states and the District of Columbia.…
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Unwinding Wednesday #10: FAQs Provide Additional Clarity on State Options Before and During the Unwinding
Over the past two years, CMS has published a wealth of resources designed to aid states in the unwinding process. These documents, which provide guidance and lay out flexibilities available to states, are available on a single landing page on Medicaid.gov. In our tenth installment of Unwinding Wednesday, we are highlighting a recent addition to…
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Medicaid Managed Care: The Big Five in PHE Q11 (Q3 2022)
September 30 marked the end of the 3rd quarter of this calendar year. It also marked the end of the 11th quarter of the Public Health Emergency (PHE). The two are not unrelated. During the PHE, states receive an additional 6.2 percentage points on their regular federal matching rate if they agree not to terminate…
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New MACPAC Data on the Highly Effective Medicaid Drug Rebate Program
As I have previously explained, under the highly effective Medicaid Drug Rebate Program, drug manufacturers must provide substantial rebates to the federal government and states as a condition of having their drugs covered by Medicaid. The rebates apply to both fee-for-service and to managed care. A groundbreaking 2021 Congressional Budget Office study found that compared…
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Unwinding Wednesday #9: CMS Should Add the Unwinding Supplemental Data to the Medicaid Performance Indicators
In last week’s Unwinding Wednesday blog, my colleague Allie Gardner noted that CMS is requiring states to provide supplemental data for monitoring the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage protection. These data are in addition to the performance indicator data that states have been required to submit monthly since 2013. But … the supplemental data…
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Medicaid Beneficiaries Ask the Supreme Court: Do We Have a Friend in You?
On November 8, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in what my colleague Leo Cuello has called “the most consequential case you’ve never heard of:” Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski. The case began as a lawsuit against a county-owned nursing facility in Indiana by a now-deceased resident who alleged that…
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The End of Medicaid Rights May Be Upon Us: You Need to Know About the Talevski Case
The Supreme Court, the same court that trashed decades of settled precedent to overturn Roe and, in NFIB, for-the-first-time-ever ruled that a federal spending program (the Medicaid expansion) was “coercive” upon states, that court, is about to decide whether to completely wipe out the rights of Medicaid enrollees. Buckle up, friends. On November 8, the…
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HHS Announces New Planning Grants for Medicaid-Funded Behavioral Health Clinic Demonstration
Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it will be awarding up to $15 million in new planning grants to states as part of its national expansion of the Medicaid-funded Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) demonstration program under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The announcement comes on the heels of…
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Unwinding Wednesday #8: Key Data to Monitor Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Coverage Protection (Part 2)
As we prepare for the eventual end of the Medicaid continuous coverage protection, a key focus here at CCF has been on monitoring the unwinding process. In last week’s Unwinding Wednesday, my colleague Tricia Brooks highlighted data such as the Medicaid and CHIP performance indicator (PI) data that can be useful in monitoring the unwinding.…
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Mandatory Reporting on Medicaid Quality Measures: What Did Congress Intend?
In August, CMS posted its proposed rule to codify Congressional action taken in 2018 to mandate state reporting of the Child Core Set and the Adult Behavioral Health Core Set of quality measures in Medicaid and CHIP, starting in 2024. Until 2024, state reporting on the core sets is voluntary. I did a quick scan…
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Unwinding Wednesday #7: Key Data to Monitor Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Coverage Protection (Part 1)
The ninth webinar in our unwinding series with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities focused on three sources of data to monitor the impact as states begin to process disenrollments once the Medicaid continuous coverage provision is lifted. We discussed 1) the data that states have been required to report as part of the…
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California’s Medicaid Managed Care Procurement: A Transparency Event
On August 25, California’s Medicaid agency announced its selections of managed care organizations (MCOs) to serve some 6.4 million beneficiaries in 21 counties beginning in 2024. The selections, which resulted from the procurement that the agency launched with a Request for Proposal (RFP) in February—a potential game-changer—did not meet with universal applause. Losing bidders have…
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Proposed Rule Provides Opportunity to Advance Behavioral Health Quality
As my colleague, Maggie Clark, wrote about on Say Ahhh! earlier this week – we can’t improve what we don’t measure. This is why CMS’s recently proposed rule on reporting of quality measures in Medicaid and CHIP is critical to advancing behavioral health care quality. The proposed rule, open for comment through October 21, requires…
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HHS Secretary Becerra Extends the Public Health Emergency into 2023
HHS Secretary Becerra has declared that the COVID-19 public health emergency is extended for another 90 days through January 11, 2023. This means that February 1, 2023, is the earliest that the Medicaid continuous coverage protection would be lifted and states could begin to disenroll people after completing a full renewal and review of ongoing…
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Unwinding Wednesday #6: Communications Toolkits Offer a Variety of Messages and Materials to Help Mitigate Coverage Losses
This week on Unwinding Wednesday, we are digging into the communications materials and toolkits found on our 50-state Unwinding Tracker – arguably one of the most critical elements of the tracker for ensuring individuals with Medicaid coverage are adequately prepared for the unwinding. The development of comprehensive communications materials by state Medicaid agencies is vital…
