Say Ahhh!
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Many Unanswered Questions about Trump Budget’s CHIP Financing Proposal
The Trump Administration’s fiscal year 2020 budget, released on March 11, includes a single legislative proposal (described here) related to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Entitled “Strengthen the CHIP Safety Net for States,” the proposal would eliminate the CHIP’s Child Enrollment Contingency Fund in fiscal year 2021 and replace it with a new Shortfall…
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Trump Budget Includes Harmful Medicaid Drug Rebate Proposal, Several Sound Improvements
On March 11, the Trump Administration released its fiscal year 2020 budget. As my colleague Andy Schneider has written, the Administration budget plan would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, impose a per capita cap or block grant on the rest of the Medicaid program, require all states to adopt onerous work reporting requirements…
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CMS Announces Reorganization of Offices Overseeing Medicaid and CHIP
CMS recently announced a reorganization of the regional and central offices that oversee Medicaid and CHIP. It’s too soon to tell how the re-org will impact the day-to-day operations of Medicaid and CHIP, but the federal register notice says that the new structure will support consistent policy implementation and accountability. You may not have even…
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Administration’s Budget Proposal Includes $1.5 Trillion in Medicaid Cuts
[Editor’s Note: Read about the Trump Administration’s budget proposal for FY2021.] Here they go again. Last year, the Administration proposed a budget that would have cut federal Medicaid spending by $1.4 trillion over ten years. In the budget released this morning, the Administration proposes to cut federal Medicaid spending by $1.5 trillion over the next…
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What States Can Do to Help Babies and Their Families Thrive
Each baby is born with limitless potential, and anyone who has ever held a baby has felt the enormity of opportunity ahead. But as ZERO TO THREE and Child Trends’ 50-state assessment of the state of babies in the United States finds, some babies come into the world facing more obstacles than opportunities. One in…
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Child Health Providers and Advocates Ask HHS Secretary to Reject Work Requirements for Low-Income Parents
Today Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families joined over 50 other national health care provider, research and consumer groups focused on children and families to send a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar raising concerns about the harm of work requirements for children and families, particularly in states that have not expanded Medicaid. The…
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A Tribute to Rob Restuccia, a True Health Care Hero
Over the weekend our longtime friend and colleague Rob Restuccia succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Whether his years at the helm of the national consumer advocacy organization Community Catalyst or his work on the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, or many other policy debates, Rob was at the center of the effort to extend the benefits of…
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Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Down 600k Children in 2018
After CMS released October 2018 Medicaid and CHIP data, we reported that child enrollment was down by more than half a million children in the first 10 months of 2018. So needless to say, we were anxious to see the final November 2018 numbers, which were just released. In November 2018, child enrollment in Medicaid…
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How to Assess the Impact of Health Coverage Expansion Proposals on Children
With the outcome of the Congressional midterm elections, the risk of federal legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and impose a cap on federal Medicaid funding has receded. Some federal policymakers are instead renewing focus on how to again make substantial progress towards the goal of universal coverage. This need has become…
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Medicaid and State Budgets: Checking the Facts (Yet Again)
It’s that time of year again. Estimators publish their projections of Medicaid spending, journalists report on the projections, and policymakers decide whether and how they want to act. Medicaid covers up to 35 million low-income children, so getting these projections right, and explaining them correctly, is hugely important for public understanding of the program. Unfortunately,…
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It’s Time to Focus on the Future of Children’s Health Coverage
With the bad news that the nation’s uninsured rate for children went in the wrong direction for the first time in nearly a decade, it’s time for kid’s health to get back to the top of the agenda for policymakers. Here at CCF, we’re reinvigorating a project we started a few years ago that aims…
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First Round of Arkansas 2019 Medicaid Data Shows More Coverage Losses Are on the Way
Last week, the state of Arkansas released its latest round of data on implementation of its Medicaid work reporting requirement – the first in the country to be implemented. As readers of SayAhhh! know, over 18,000 lost coverage in 2018 as a result of not complying with the new reporting rules. And the policy is…
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CMS Administrator Ignores Congressional Advisory Committee Recommendation
In 2009, Congress created the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) to advise it on coverage for low-income Americans through Medicaid and CHIP. One of MACPAC’s statutory responsibilities is to “review and assess…Medicaid and CHIP eligibility policies, including a determination of the degree to which federal and state policies provide health care coverage…
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Designed to Fail: Utah’s Backdoor Repeal of Voter-Approved Medicaid Expansion
In November 2018, a majority of voters in Utah passed a Medicaid expansion ballot initiative providing Medicaid health coverage to low-income parents and other adults. For example, a family of three with an annual income of less than $29,435/year would be eligible. Voters also approved a very small (0.15 percent) sales tax to pay for…
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Top 10 Rural Counties Where Kids Rely on Medicaid for Health Coverage
As readers of SayAhhh! know, Georgetown University CCF and the University of North Carolina’s Sheps Rural Health Research Center has a joint project which has been tracking the role of Medicaid for rural areas and small towns. We recently updated our online data resource with county figures for 2015/2016, a time period during which the impact…
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Clearing Up Confusion about the Medicaid Rebate Program: Part III
As federal efforts to address prescription drug costs intensifies, this three-part blog series addresses misleading claims or confusion about Medicaid, its highly effective drug rebate program and overall drug pricing issues in the hopes of better informing the debate moving forward. Part I | Part II Medicaid’s best price requirement is not the reason why…
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CMS Innovation Center releases anticipated funding opportunities focused on children: Will your state apply?
Say Ahhh! readers are familiar with one of our biggest concerns about health care payment and delivery system reforms: Kids, relatively inexpensive to begin with, are often overlooked and rarely the explicit focus. It’s hard to make improvements to health care for children and youth without payment or delivery system changes. And testing new reforms…
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A Troubling Sign: Half a Million Fewer Kids Covered by Medicaid and CHIP in 2018
Recent news of declines in enrollment in Medicaid, the growth in uninsured children and troubles with new eligibility systems in several states prompted me to take a closer look at the recently updated October 2018 Medicaid and CHIP enrollment numbers posted by CMS. As we had feared, the data shows that in the first ten…
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Clearing Up Confusion about the Medicaid Rebate Program: Part II
As federal efforts to address prescription drug costs intensifies, this three-part blog series addresses misleading claims or confusion about Medicaid, its highly effective drug rebate program and overall drug pricing issues in the hopes of better informing the debate moving forward. Part I | Part III Aggressive negotiation and closed formularies are only one factor in…
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Clearing Up Confusion about the Medicaid Rebate Program: Part I
As federal efforts to address prescription drug costs intensify, this three-part blog series addresses misleading claims or confusion about Medicaid, its highly effective drug rebate program and overall drug pricing issues in the hopes of better informing the debate moving forward. Part II | Part III In response to federal Medicaid rebate increases, drug manufacturers would…
