Blog
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Georgetown CCF’s Tricia Brooks Appointed to MACPAC
We at Georgetown CCF are so thrilled to announce that today the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) appointed Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Senior Fellow Tricia Brooks to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC). The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009…
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Research Update: A Spotlight on Children’s Oral Health
This week, I am reading the latest research on children’s oral health. Some of the notable findings include: poorer children’s oral health leads to worse academic performance, there continue to be disparities in access to child preventive oral health services, and providing dental benefits to parents may have a positive impact on children’s use of…
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Kids Coverage at Risk in Arizona
Kids coverage is again at risk in Arizona, as lawmakers there fight over whether to freeze enrollment in the state’s CHIP program (“KidsCare”), which currently covers 34,316 children. An unusual Arizona law requires the KidsCare program to freeze enrollment if the federal matching rate drops below 100%. Because a temporary increase in the CHIP matching…
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Trump Administration Proposes to Make Fewer Low-Income Individuals and Families Eligible for Medicaid and CHIP Over Time
The Trump Administration has proposed to change how the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is adjusted annually for inflation. While this sounds like a highly technical change, it would do considerable harm. That is because the OPM is used to set the federal poverty line, which in turn is used to determine income eligibility…
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Leading Children’s Health and Medical Organizations Sound Alarm on Drop in Child Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment
As Tricia Brooks uncovered in her recent blog, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) nationwide fell by about 840,000 in 2018. In response to this news, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Defense Fund, Children’s Dental Health Project, Children’s Hospital Association, Family Voices, First Focus on Children, Georgetown…
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CBO Estimates Indicate Proposed Drug Rebate Safe Harbor Rule Would Increase Federal and State Medicaid Costs by $10.5 Billion Over Next Decade
On May 2, as part of its new baseline, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued an analysis of the impact on Medicaid of the Trump Administration’s proposed rule to eliminate the safe harbor in the federal anti-kickback law for rebates negotiated by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) on behalf of Medicaid managed care plans and Medicare…
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Medicaid Managed Care Transparency: What Can Quality Data Do?
Earlier this week the data transparency door to Medicaid managed care opened. Not as wide as some of us would hope, but wide enough to start a detailed conversation about the performance of individual MCOs on quality. It happened at a briefing sponsored by the California Health Care Foundation and took the form of a…
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New CBO Baseline Expects Number of Uninsured to Rise by 5 Million Over Next Decade
On May 2, the Congressional Budget Office issued its new baseline, including health coverage projections for the period 2019-2029. CBO expects the number of non-elderly uninsured people nationwide will increase by 5 million over the next ten years, from 30 million in calendar year 2019 to 35 million in calendar year 2029. That is in…
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Pediatricians and CCF Release 2019 State Snapshots on Children’s Health Coverage
We’ve continued the tradition we started three years ago with our colleagues at the American Academy of Pediatrics to create state snapshots that focus on the valuable role Medicaid and CHIP fill for children. These snapshots provide details on who’s covered by Medicaid and CHIP in each state and how Medicaid/CHIP fit into the overall…
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Why is Florida’s Medicaid Work Reporting Proposal the Harshest in the Country for Kids and Families?
A few weeks ago I blogged about Florida’s bill being the worst I have seen nationwide. The bill’s sponsor definitely didn’t read the blog (as was made clear during the House floor debate), nor did he seem concerned about the many valid criticisms raised during the debate, and the bill passed the House last week…
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Nebraska Residents Will Have to Wait for Medicaid Expansion While Governor Puts More Obstacles in Path to Coverage
Writer George Orwell would love the Nebraska Governor’s complex plan to implement the simple expansion of Medicaid health coverage passed by Nebraska voters in 2018 that would help an estimated 95,000 of the state’s residents gain coverage. In Orwell’s book “1984”, the fictional state of Oceania asked citizens to accept opposing ideas as both being…
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Medicaid and Early Childhood Home Visiting Collaboration: A Washington Perspective
Early in Washington’s Medicaid and early childhood home visiting collaboration, it was clear we needed a common understanding of home visiting services compared to home-based Medicaid services. As it happens, there are some significant differences! Although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not authorize home visiting models in their entirety, they do…
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More Sabotage: Trump Administration Cuts Marketplace Premium Subsidies
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently issued the Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2020, which finalized a harmful provision first proposed in January that would effectively reduce the amount of premium tax credits available to purchase marketplace plans over time. Like prior Administration actions that have sabotaged the marketplaces, this would…
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New Data Show Widespread Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP Coverage in 2018
We’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of final Medicaid and CHIP enrollment data for 2018, which was expected to be posted almost a month ago. The wait is finally over but not our concerns about what’s happening. In the meantime, more stories about eligibility system issues in a handful of states and states conducting more…
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Updated CBO Estimates Find Uninsured Increased by 1.4 Million Between 2016 and 2018
Recently, as part of materials explaining the new version of its health microsimulation model, the Congressional Budget Office issued updated estimates for the number of non-elderly people without health coverage over the past four years. According to the CBO estimates, the number of uninsured people under age 65 rose from 27.5 million in fiscal year…
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Centene’s takeover of WellCare: What would it mean for kids and families covered by Medicaid?
On March 27, the Centene Corporation announced it would acquire WellCare Health Plans, Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $17.3 billion. The transaction is subject to approval by the shareholders of both companies as well as state regulators. The companies “expect to complete the transaction in the first half of 2020.” For…
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New Research Documents Health Benefits of Medicaid Expansion
We like to review the research here at CCF and that certainly goes for papers examining the effects of Medicaid expansion. I pulled together a quick overview of that research last year and recently my colleague, Lauren Roygardner, has highlighted an impressive study showing Medicaid expansion improves access to treatments for opioid addiction. The studies…
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Louisiana Launches Pilot Work Promotion Program Instead of Punitive Work Reporting Requirements
Gov. John Bel Edwards in Louisiana should be commended. Not only did he fulfil a campaign promise to expand Medicaid to thousands of Louisianans, but now he has launched a positive work support pilot program for Medicaid beneficiaries. Positive work support initiatives illustrate there are better ways to assist Medicaid enrollees in improving their employment…
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Who’s Minding the Store for Tennessee Children Relying on Medicaid and CHIP?
When I began my career as a children’s advocate in the 90s, Tennessee led the nation in the percentage of its children with health insurance. It was a proud moment for our poor Southern state that was brought about by the vision and political effectiveness of Democrat Governor Ned Ray McWhether and by the courage…
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Where Does the Trump Administration’s Medicaid Waiver Policy Go Next?
Last week was a busy week with a federal court vacating both Arkansas and Kentucky’s Medicaid Section 1115 waivers on Wednesday and the Trump Administration approving Utah’s partial expansion waiver with a work requirement and an enrollment cap on Friday—but without the full expansion match. (Read more on Utah past and present). Given the immediate…
