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Say Ahhh!

  • Infants Covered by Medicaid and CHIP Likely Hardest Hit by Formula Shortage, WIC a Key Resource

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    Before newborns can try solid foods, breastmilk or infant formula are the sole sources of nutrition to keep them fed. This is why the infant formula shortage has added yet another layer of stress on families with infants.  As many families continue to struggle to access formula, a new brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation…

  • New Urban Institute Analysis Underscores Importance of Continuous Medicaid Coverage Protection for Kids

    Joan Alker

    A new brief out this week from The Urban Institute confirms what we have suspected — the Medicaid continuous coverage provision has halted the increase in uninsured children that we saw during the Trump years.  (As SayAhhh! readers know, no one can be involuntarily disenrolled during the federally declared public health emergency as a consequence…

  • Biden Administration Releases Badly Needed Maternal Mortality Strategy as Dobbs Decision Could Worsen Crisis

    Maggie Clark

    The U.S. is in the midst of a maternal mortality crisis: rates of maternal death are rising and Black women continue to die from pregnancy-related causes at more than twice the national average. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to allow states to ban abortion could make the maternal…

  • New Data from CMS Shows Mental Health Services for Children Continue to Lag Behind Pre-Pandemic Levels

    Anne Dwyer

    This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released an update to its Medicaid and CHIP COVID-19 data snapshot with new data through January 2022. Unfortunately, as highlighted in the snapshot, while the number of mental health services provided to adults during the public health emergency nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, the rate…

  • South Dakota’s Journey to Medicaid Expansion: An Update 

    Cathy Hope

    South Dakota is still on track to close its Medicaid coverage gap. Voters in the state are set to decide whether to expand Medicaid through ballot initiative this November. Legislators opposed to expansion, recognizing the success of ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid in other states, made an attempt to prevent expansion – but this ended…

  • Senate Releases Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Includes Medicaid Mental Health Provisions

    Anne Dwyer

    [Editor’s Note: The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act has since passed the Senate and the House and was signed into law by the President on Saturday, June 25th.] As we wrote about last week, the Senate has been actively working to advance an agreement on a gun safety bill that includes a number of provisions related to mental health.…

  • Congress Focuses on Mental Health, Medicaid Gains Attention

    Anne Dwyer

    This week has been a busy one on Capitol Hill as it relates to congressional efforts on mental health. On Sunday, a bipartisan group of twenty Senators announced they had reached an agreement on a framework related to gun safety including investments in child and family mental health services. On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee…

  • New Georgetown CHIR Case Study Report Examines Policies to Expand Primary Care Access in Rural New Mexico

    CCFadmin

    By Maanasa Kona, Jalisa Clark, Megan Houston, and Emma Walsh-Alker with the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Primary care is a critical tool to prevent illness and death and to improve the equitable distribution of health care in populations. However, access to this important source of care is lacking, especially for many underserved…

  • White House Enlists Broad Range of Programs, Partners to Connect Youngest Children to COVID Vaccines

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    Many parents are anxiously awaiting approval of the COVID vaccine for children under age 5. Once approved, the vaccines will close the final gap in vaccine access so that Americans of all ages can get immunized. As we wait for final approvals, the Biden Administration has been at work shoring up a range of partners…

  • CMS Gives States an Extra Year to Spend ARPA Home and Community-Based Services Funds

    Anne Dwyer

    As we’ve previously written about here on Say Ahhh!, the American Rescue Plan included a number of provisions providing new opportunities for state Medicaid programs including temporary funding to enhance, expand, and strengthen home and community-based services for individuals covered by Medicaid. Under a CMS announcement made last week, states now have an extra year…

  • Take the Child Health Dashboard Tour

    Allie Corcoran

    Since we debuted the Dashboard Library, we’ve been keeping our eyes on state Medicaid agency websites and are pleased to announce that we’ve discovered quite a few more. The dashboards we’ve added to the list vary widely in content and presentation style, ranging from slides to interactive workbooks. Unfortunately, none of the dashboards that we…

  • CCF Submits Comments to Proposed Rule Fixing the Family Glitch

    Edwin Park

    On June 2, 2022, CCF submitted public comments to the Internal Revenue Service related to a proposed rule which would finally fix the “family glitch.”  As my colleague Tricia Brooks recently explained, the family glitch makes many children and other dependents in families offered unaffordable employer-based family coverage ineligible for premium tax credits to purchase…

  • The Latest on Child Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment During the Pandemic

    Joan Alker

    CCF’s Aubrianna Osorio and Allie Corcoran are keeping tabs on child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP during the pandemic period. Below is the latest – from February 2020 to January 2022 child enrollment has increased by 14.4 percent nationwide. A few things jumped out at me: As is common, we are probably seeing “welcome mat”…

  • Doula Services in Medicaid: State Progress in 2022

    CCFadmin

    During last April’s Black Maternal Health Week, hosted by Black Mammas Alliance, policymakers, advocates, and community members came together to shed light and share policy solutions to combat the current maternal health crisis greatly affecting Black and brown birthing people in the US, which only worsened with the pandemic. The most recent CDC data shows…

  • Show Me the Data: A Medicaid Dashboard for Missouri

    CCFadmin

    We are pleased to announce the most recent addition to our library of Medicaid dashboards: Missouri. One of the most important functions of easily accessible and digestible data (like a dashboard) is the increased transparency that it offers both Medicaid beneficiaries and advocates. This is especially significant when it comes to holding Managed Care Organizations…

  • HHS Agency Leaders Issue Joint Letter on Children’s Mental Health: Call on States, Tribes and Jurisdictions to Coordinate Federal Funds

    Anne Dwyer

    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…

  • Maternal Mental Health Hotline, Postpartum Medicaid Extension Approvals Show Support for New Moms

    Maggie Clark

    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…

  • New CMS Resource is a Helpful Summary of Requirements for Unwinding the Continuous Coverage Protection

    CCFadmin

    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…

  • More States Move to Expand Continuous Eligibility for Children and Adults in Medicaid

    CCFadmin

    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…

  • Medicaid Households Among Those Eligible for Reduced-Cost, High-Speed Internet Service Benefit

    Margaux Johnson-Green

    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…