Say Ahhh!
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CMS, FNS Announce Additional Demonstrations to Evaluate Impacts of Data Sharing
On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted a Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) Informational Bulletin to notify state Medicaid agencies of an additional demonstration to encourage and analyze interagency data sharing to help eligible students access free and reduced-price school meals. The new demonstration, issued by the U.S. Department…
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The Poorest Children Are The Ones That Lost Health Insurance During The Pandemic
While we won’t be able to do our in-depth analysis of children’s health coverage trends this fall due to problems collecting American Community Survey data during the pandemic, the Census Bureau did release a report on national trends in health insurance coverage in 2020 using the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Overall,…
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Federal and State Policymakers Must Address Alarmingly High Maternal Mortality Rates and Racial Disparities
The United States has an unacceptably high maternal mortality rate and it is getting worse. The latest data from the CDC shows that maternal mortality increased significantly between 2018 and 2019, topping out at the highest recorded rate since the agency began tracking the rate more than 30 years ago. A country’s maternal mortality rate…
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House Energy and Commerce Committee Releases Text of Medicaid/CHIP Reconciliation Provisions
Last night, legislative language was released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which has jurisdiction over Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)) – the “Build Back Better Act”. The Committee plans to “mark up” these provisions starting Monday — so things are now moving quickly inside the Beltway to move forward a…
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Scan of 13 States’ Medicaid Managed Care Organizations Uncovers Need for More Transparency
At the beginning of July, North Carolina became the fortieth state to make the switch from fee-for-service (FFS) to Medicaid managed care. With the new system barely off the ground, a recent news report highlighted the stories of providers facing denied prior authorizations, delayed payments, and excessive paperwork. One provider stressed that she hadn’t received…
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Research Update: Health Care Spending Differences by Race and Ethnicity
This week, I’m highlighting recent research looking at differences in health care spending by race and ethnicity. Researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor examined health care spending, health system encounters (like office visits, emergency admissions, and prescriptions), diagnosed health conditions, and self-reported…
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CCF Welcomes National Urban Fellow Tomás Guarnizo
Today we are excited to welcome our first National Urban Fellow, Tomás Guarnizo, to the CCF team. Tomás will be completing his Masters in Policy Management at the McCourt School of Public Policy while he works with us on our maternal/early childhood health and managed care projects. The National Urban Fellows (NUF) program, like CCF and…
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CHIP has Proven Its Worth, It’s Time to Modernize it and Make it a Permanent Part of Children’s Health Coverage
Since its inception in 1997, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has established itself as a critical piece of the federal/state response to children’s health care needs and the historic reduction in children’s uninsured rates (which sadly started going in the wrong direction during the Trump Administration). In addition to covering over 6 million children…
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New! Tips for Advocates on Preparing for Unwinding of the PHE Continuous Eligibility Provision
[Editor’s Note: A new version of our Tips and Best Practices for Unwinding the Medicaid Continuous Coverage Protection can be found here.] Although the end of the public health emergency (PHE) remains a moving target, it’s not too early to start planning for phasing out the continuous eligibility maintenance of effort provision and the eventual…
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Wyoming Transitions Its Separate CHIP Program into Medicaid
In May, Wyoming received approval to transition its separate Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) into what we call an M-CHIP program, where all children funded through CHIP coverage expansions are enrolled in Medicaid. Wyoming follows in the footsteps of North Dakota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and California – all of which converted their separate CHIP programs…
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Stakeholders Invited to Engage with DHS to Achieve a Fairer Public Charge Policy
Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) requesting broad public feedback on the public charge ground of inadmissibility. If you’re scratching your head at the idea of an “A”NPRM, you’re not alone. Think of it as a Request for Information (RFI) specifically tied to the…
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Medicaid Wars: The Unwinding (and Litigation) Continues (Episode IV)
It’s been seven months and change since the Biden Administration took office. What it found waiting for it on January 20 was not just a crisis of democracy and a global pandemic and a surge of unaccompanied children at the border, but also a large pile of policy intended to undercut the Administration’s ability to…
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New Report Underscores Need to Help Citizen Children from Mixed Status Families Enroll in Medicaid/CHIP
Ninety-seven percent of children living in the US are citizens, but one in four have an immigrant parent. New research from the Urban Institute shows that coverage gaps for citizen children with noncitizen parents widened relative to other children from 2016-2019, reversing much of the coverage gains these children experienced from 2013-2016. These findings are…
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Commonwealth Fund Blog Series on Medicaid Drug Pricing Issues
Congress and the Biden Administration are currently pursuing substantial drug pricing reforms as part of the reconciliation legislation expected to move this fall. While the focus is primarily on Medicare, Medicaid should not be overlooked. In an ongoing series of posts for the Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog, I examine some key Medicaid drug…
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Federal Government Accepting Public Comments on Tennessee Medicaid Block Grant Waiver Restricting Access to Prescription Drugs
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have reopened a 30-day public comment period for Tennessee’s controversial section 1115 waiver, which the Trump Administration approved in January 2021. While the waiver’s radical centerpiece converting the state’s federal Medicaid funding into a block grant has rightfully received the most attention, the waiver would also allow…
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Participation of Eligible, Uninsured Children in Medicaid and CHIP Declined Again in 2019
[Editor’s Note: You can find state level Medicaid/CHIP participation rates on CCF’s State Data Hub.] Since the American Community Survey (ACS) was first released in 2008, the Urban Institute has estimated the share of uninsured children who are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. Several weeks ago, Urban released its latest analysis based…
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Hidden in Plain Sight: A Medicaid Managed Care Pay-For
The Medicaid managed care market continues to grow. A review of the Q2 financial reports of the “Big Five” national managed care companies by my colleague Allie Corcoran finds that, over the first six months of 2021, Medicaid enrollment increased, on average, by 14.9 percent year-to-year. This increase is being driven in part by the…
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Medicaid Managed Care: 2021 Results for the “Big Five” at Q2
You’ve heard it here before: for children and families in forty states and the District of Columbia, managed care organization (MCO) performance determines if they get the care to which they are entitled. And, for many MCOs, this performance is influenced by the rules, regulations, and corporate culture of their national parent firm. As of…
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Biden Administration Takes Further Action to End Barriers to Medicaid Coverage
Nearly six months ago, the Biden Administration initiated efforts to withdraw work reporting requirements in the eleven states with approved section 1115 Medicaid waivers. Now, the resolution many have been waiting for is almost entirely complete. On August 10, Ohio, South Carolina, and Utah all received letters from CMS formally withdrawing their work requirement waivers.…
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CMS Takes Positive Steps to Protect Enrollees from Loss of Coverage at End of the PHE
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about opportunities for the Biden Administration to make improvements to the December 2020 guidance issued to states on resuming routine eligibility and enrollment operations at the end of the public health emergency (PHE). At the top of the list was to give states more time to catch up…
