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HHS Agency Leaders Issue Joint Letter on Children’s Mental Health: Call on States, Tribes and Jurisdictions to Coordinate Federal Funds
As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to an end, last week, leaders from six agencies across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a joint letter calling on states, tribes, and jurisdictions to support children’s mental health and well-being by coordinating the use of federal funds, including mental health care covered by…
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Maternal Mental Health Hotline, Postpartum Medicaid Extension Approvals Show Support for New Moms
New moms experiencing mental health challenges now have access to a free, confidential 24-hour hotline to help them talk through their challenges with counselors trained to offer maternal mental health support, Biden Administration officials announced earlier this month. The new maternal mental health hotline, accessible for free by call or text to 1-833-9-HELP4MOMS, is live…
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New CMS Resource is a Helpful Summary of Requirements for Unwinding the Continuous Coverage Protection
Over the past year and a half, CMS has released a variety of guidance, slide decks, tools, templates, and other resources on the unwinding of the continuous coverage provision. After a while, it can be pretty daunting to keep up with everything. Thankfully, the agency made it easier to find these resources by posting all…
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More States Move to Expand Continuous Eligibility for Children and Adults in Medicaid
Waiver authorities granted through Section 1115 demonstrations are meant to be experiments that serve the objectives of the Medicaid program—namely, promoting access to health coverage. But what exactly does this look like? In some very welcome news, there has been a recent uptick in the number of states requesting to expand continuous eligibility through Section…
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Medicaid Households Among Those Eligible for Reduced-Cost, High-Speed Internet Service Benefit
With remote learning necessitated by the pandemic, access to high-speed internet became as crucial for student success as pencils once were. While the urgency to address the digital divide brought about temporary solutions to narrow it, millions of low-income families still remain “under-connected” – meaning that their internet connectivity or devices are inadequate or unreliable…
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CMS Affirms States Must Cover Stand-Alone Vaccine Counseling under EPSDT, More Work to Be Done
As families and parents across the country eagerly await approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for children under 5, new guidance from CMS reaffirms that states must cover stand-alone vaccine counseling for children covered by Medicaid under EPSDT. According to guidance released last week, CMS reiterates that under Medicaid’s Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment…
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Secretary Becerra Will Extend the PHE Again, What Does This Mean for Medicaid’s Continuous Coverage Protections?
[UPDATE as of August 16, 2022: HHS Secretary Becerra signed an extension of the Public Health Emergency on July 15, 2022. With less than 60 days before the end of the current PHE, which runs through mid-October, it is expected that the PHE will be renewed again as the Biden administration did not issue a…
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How Medicaid Can Help Schools Sustain Support for Students’ Mental Health
Among the Covid-19 pandemic’s most pernicious aftershocks is its impact on student mental health. Isolated at home, disconnected from friends, and suffering trauma from family members’ job losses or Covid-related deaths, students are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression. About 44 percent of adolescents experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the pandemic compared to…
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Fewer People Lost Postpartum Medicaid Coverage During the Pandemic, New Study Finds
More people had stable access to Medicaid coverage in the year after giving birth during the COVID-19 pandemic, which suggests that the Families First Coronavirus Response Act’s Medicaid continuous coverage provision, which linked receipt of enhanced federal Medicaid and CHIP funding to a prohibition on involuntary disenrollment from Medicaid during the COVID-19 public health emergency,…
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Standards for Provider Network Adequacy in Medicaid and the Marketplaces
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued final rules for provider network adequacy in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) offering coverage in the Marketplaces that the federal government operates through HealthCare.gov. Under these rules, which come with the snappy title, “Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters” and the even snappier initialism (NBPP), CMS…
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Federal Fiscal Relief Funding Offset More than Twice the Cost to States to Maintain Medicaid Continuous Coverage
A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimates the COVID-related increase in federal Medicaid and CHIP funding will exceed the cost of maintaining continuous coverage for Medicaid enrollees as required under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The analysis estimates that between January 2020 and September 2022, states will receive approximately $100.4 billion…
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Policymakers Have More Work to Do to Address the Black Maternal Health Crisis
By Maggie Clark and Kay Johnson Last month, policymakers and advocates marked the fifth-annual Black Maternal Health Week and called attention to the policy changes that can help put an end to the country’s increasing and unacceptably high rates of maternal mortality, especially for Black women who die from pregnancy-related causes at a rate more…
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HHS Kicks off Mental Health Awareness Month with New Fact Sheet and a $25 Million Investment in School-Based Health Centers
Last week, HHS announced that they have awarded nearly $25 million to Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-funded health centers that deliver services at school-based sites in underserved communities. These awards build upon the $5 million that HRSA distributed to new and existing school-based service sites in September 2021. Similar to last year’s round of…
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American Academy of Pediatrics and Georgetown University CCF Urge PHE Extension to Protect Children from Losing Medicaid Health Coverage
In an opinion piece for The Hill, American Academy of Pediatrics President Dr. Moira Szilagyi and Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Executive Director Joan Alker explain why it is so critical for the Biden administration to continue the public health emergency beyond July 15. An estimated 7 million children nationwide are at considerable risk…
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Medicaid Managed Care: The Big Five in PHE Q9 (Q1 2022)
March 31 marked the end of the ninth quarter of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE). First declared by the Secretary of HHS on January 31, 2020, the PHE has subsequently been extended nine times, through July 15. As long as the PHE is in place, states qualify for an additional 6.2 percentage points on…
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Child Uninsured Rate in 2021: Medicaid’s Continuous Coverage Provision is Helping
Children’s uninsured rate decreased from 2020 to 2021, according to new Early Release data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). According to the NHIS, uninsurance for children under age 18 fell to 4.1 percent in 2021. Using this data source, the uninsured rate had remained steady at 5.1…
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In South Dakota, Medicaid Expansion May Be Up to Voters
In states that have not expanded Medicaid, it’s not for lack of options on how to enact expansion. States have used multiple options to expand Medicaid, including legislation, executive action, and voter-led actions. In South Dakota, one of the twelve remaining states that has yet to expand Medicaid, lawmakers put forward legislation earlier this year…
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Georgians Work to Create a Stronger More Accessible Mental and Behavioral Health Care System
By Erica Fener Sitkoff, Ph.D. Voices for Georgia’s Children The reality is, no one has escaped the effects of the profound mental health challenges we face – in the news, in our shared communities, in our homes. In fact, the world’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic gave us a collective definition for unwellness like no…
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HHS and CMS Request FCC Opinion on Text Messaging by Contractors and MCOs
HHS Secretary Becerra and CMS Administrator Brooks-LaSure have formally asked for an opinion from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding whether certain text messages and automated, pre-recorded telephone calls to individuals’ cell phones are permissible under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Prior rulings from the FCC have confirmed that neither federal nor state governments…
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Report Finds Medicaid Expansion Has Made Huge Impact in Montana, Especially in Rural Areas
The Montana Healthcare Foundation hired consulting firm Manatt Health to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of the Montana legislature’s expansion of the Medicaid program. This follows up the foundation’s 2021 report on Montana’s Medicaid program and Medicaid expansion. Combined, these reports lay out the background of Medicaid in Montana and the program’s reach,…
