Blog
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Medicaid Work Requirement Waivers: Time for CMS to Hit the Pause Button
Yesterday members of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC – a Congressional agency) received a briefing from staff on the implementation of the Arkansas work requirement waiver. Staff reviewed the latest data from the state as well as the findings from their own inquiries to various stakeholders. The presentation confirmed my reading…
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Are you Ready for Open Enrollment? Updated Navigator Resource Guide will Help You Understand Policy Changes
On November 1, the sixth open enrollment period begins for marketplace coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We at the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms will soon re-launch our updated Navigator Resource Guide, made possible by the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Guide provides information on recent policy changes, a list of enrollment…
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The MOM Model: New CMS Initiative Aims to Improve Systems of Care for Pregnant and Postpartum Women with Opioid Use Disorder
The CMS Innovation Center announced a new tool to help address the devastating impact our nation’s growing opioid crisis is having on pregnant and postpartum women and their infants. The Maternal Opioid Misuse (MOM) model is the latest approach in CMS’s strategy to tackle the opioid crisis in a key population group, expectant and new…
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How Would Medicaid Provisions of New Law to Address Opioid Epidemic Impact Children?
Today President Trump signed the “SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act” into law. SUPPORT is an acronym for “Substance Use—Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment.” The bill, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House (396-14) and the Senate (98-1), is 250 pages long. It affects a broad array of federal…
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Got Education Metrics? City Health Dashboard Supports Data-Driven Decision-Making for Student Health and Success
Maximizing the educational experience and success of every child in America must be a priority to create healthier, more equitable communities. But how can community leaders make sense of the plethora of data that exists in order to make sound decisions that promote healthy child and adolescent development? Fortunately, a new resource, the City Health…
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What Medicaid Can Do for Our Nation’s Youngest Children
The science is clear: We have a critical opportunity to reach young children during a period of rapid development, with the brain forming one million new neural connections every second. These earliest years are full of possibilities equally as powerful as the vulnerabilities that greatly influence children’s lifelong trajectories. Anyone who’s had the pleasure of chatting…
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Arkansas Numbers Tell the Story: Trump’s Medicaid Work Requirement Policy Promotes Coverage Losses not Work
Like many folks who work on Medicaid policy, we’ve been paying close attention to what is happening in Arkansas – the first state in the country to implement a work activities reporting requirement in Medicaid.[1] Earlier this week, the second round of data was released by the state documenting that another 4,109 Medicaid beneficiaries lost…
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Proposed “Public Charge” Rule Risks Immigrants’ Access to Private Coverage, Too
On October 10, the Trump administration published a proposed rule that significantly harms immigrant families, in part by dramatically reducing their access to health coverage and care. As our Center for Children & Families (CCF) colleague Kelly Whitener has documented on our sister blog (CCF’s Say Ahhh!), the so-called “Public Charge” rule would make it far more difficult…
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The Trump Administration’s Association Health Plans Emerge: What Early Announcements Tell Us About this New Market
This past summer, the Department of Labor (DOL) finalized a regulation calling for the expansion of association health plans (AHPs) for small businesses and self-employed individuals. AHPs are insurance policies offered through an association, often to members within a specific trade, industry, or profession. Among other changes, DOL’s rule loosened the requirements under which a group of employers…
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Administration Moves Forward with Proposed Public Charge Regulation; Comments Due in December
As we have long suspected, the Administration is moving forward with a proposed regulation to dramatically change our immigration system and significantly harm immigrant families. The Department of Homeland Security posted a draft version of the rule about two weeks ago, and just this morning the rule was finally posted for inspection in the Federal…
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Urban Institute Updates Uninsurance and Medicaid/CHIP Participation Data for Children and Parents
Several weeks ago, I blogged about a Health Affairs article by Urban Institute researchers that updated the Medicaid and CHIP participation rates for children and parents. Over time, an increasing share of eligible children without other coverage have been enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, reaching a high of 93.7 percent in 2016, up from 88.7…
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New Podcast Spotlights Barriers to Health Care for Georgia’s Children
Voices for Georgia’s Children has launched an inaugural podcast series — Challenges for Children – focused on barriers to health care for children. In April 2018, the Voices for Georgia’s Children team set out to find out why so many of their state’s children were being left behind. Team members traveled to Whitfield, Dougherty, Effingham,…
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Developmental Screening Rates Improving for Most States Reporting Child Core Set Measure
We were thrilled to see release of the latest Child Core Set measures late last week. Say Ahhh! readers know we are closely following this state-reported data as a means to measure quality of care for children—especially since states will be required to report all Child Core Set measures starting in 2024, thanks to the…
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New Recommendations for the Child Core Set of Quality Measures in Medicaid and CHIP
Recently, the National Quality Forum (NQF) released its annual report on opportunities to strengthen the child core set of quality measures in Medicaid and CHIP. The initial core set was released in 2010 and its underlying legislative mandate requires CMS to update the core set annually. NQF partners with CMS and a multi-stakeholder Medicaid workgroup…
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2017 Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Indicators in Medicaid and CHIP Released
The results of state reporting on the 2017 Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures in Medicaid and CHIP have been released by CMS. The 2017 Child Core Set includes 27 measures that assess key aspects of health care access for children and pregnant women. While reporting on last year’s core set seems timely,…
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Children Struggle to Access Autism Treatment
By Julie Kornack, Center for Autism and Related Disorders With a prevalence of 1 in every 59 children, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has become increasingly commonplace. In turn, the growing autism advocacy community has been extraordinarily effective in engendering the political will to enact laws intended to ensure that individuals with ASD have access…
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While We Await Official Notice of Proposed Public Rules Changes, Here are Our Thoughts on Latest Version
On Saturday, September 22, the Department of Homeland Security posted an unofficial proposed regulation that would dramatically alter immigration law by broadening the definition of public charge and significantly harming immigrant families. Earlier this year, two related drafts were leaked to the press. Researchers documented the immediate, adverse impact on immigrant families and communities and…
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African American Women Mayors Champion Policies to Improve Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes
The United States has a dismal track record when it comes to maternal and infant mortality. One of the wealthiest countries in the world, the U.S. has fallen behind and now ranks 32nd in maternal mortality and 33rd in infant mortality out of the 36 wealthiest nations. Within the U.S., the infant mortality rate varies…
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More States Link Maternal Depression Screenings to Well-Child Visits
More than twice the number of states now cover maternal depression screenings in Medicaid well child visits, up to 25 states from 11 states just one year ago. This is good news for mothers and children, and comes from an update of the National Center for Children in Poverty’s two-generation state policy profiles. The profiles…
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Rural Residents and Communities Have Much at Stake in Medicaid Expansion
Last year, working with our partners at the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Project, we released a report that underscored the critical role that Medicaid plays in rural areas and small towns with populations below 50,000. This year Jack Hoadley, Mark Holmes and I took a look at how Medicaid expansion has impacted these same…
