Blog
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New Data Find Troubling Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Continues in Many States
Several months ago, we began to highlight concerns over the declining enrollment of children in Medicaid and CHIP. Just last month we published a brief on the unusual decline, noting that child enrollment had dropped by nearly 1 million children in 38 states in 2018. Although overall national enrollment was up by close to 20k…
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Counting All Children in the 2020 Census Would Benefit Poor Children: State and Local Advocates Can Help
Being counted in the Decennial Census helps young children thrive. When they are counted, their communities get their fair share of over 800 billion dollars a year in federal funding that is allocated by formula using data derived from the federal Census. Those programs include many that remediate the harmful effects of poverty on young…
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State Policymakers Can Give Children the Best Start in Life by Maximizing and Aligning Investments
So much about a child’s health and growth is set in the years before their third birthday, when their brain is developing at a faster pace than at any time in life. As research continues to confirm, the early years of a child’s life set the stage for a lifetime of good health and well-being.…
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How Does Health Coverage for Adults Impact Children’s Healthy Development?
As federal and state policymakers debate the merits of affordable health care coverage for adults, it’s important to review the impact that adult coverage has on children’s healthy development. So naturally we were delighted when the Society for Research in Child Development asked us to work with them on a summary of the latest research.…
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In Utah, Another Attempt to Limit Access to Health Care Coverage
Utah revealed the next chapter in its drawn-out Medicaid expansion debate on May 31. Unsurprisingly, it’s yet another attempt to limit access to affordable health care coverage. Rather than heeding the will of the voters and implementing Prop 3 – which would have given 150,000 low-income Utahans access to Medicaid coverage – the state has…
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Medicaid Block Grants: Questions State Leaders Should Ask
CMS Administrator Seema Verma, the top federal Medicaid official, has been encouraging states to be the first on the block to block grant their Medicaid programs. Some states are beginning to respond. Late last month Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee signed legislation directing him to submit a proposal for a Medicaid block grant to the federal…
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What is CMS Administrator Verma’s Vision for “Reframing” Medicaid?
Last week, CQ Roll Call posted an interview with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma on the “Future of Medicaid Flexibility.” In it, she is quoted as follows: “As I look at the Medicaid program, we really want to reframe how we’ve been operating for the last 50 years. It’s really…
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CCF Submits Comments on Administration’s Damaging Proposal to Change How Poverty is Measured
We submitted public comments to the Trump Administration’s proposal to change how the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is adjusted annually for inflation. As we have previously written, while this sounds like a highly technical change, it would likely result in fewer children eligible for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) relative…
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Another Troubling Sign: Child Participation Rates in Medicaid and CHIP Dropped in 2017
Since the 2017 ACS data was released in September 2018, we have been concerned about the first increase in the number of uninsured children in a decade as highlighted in our annual uninsured children’s report. We became even more concerned as we watched the number of children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP drop in 2018,…
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Why Are So Many Children Losing Medicaid/CHIP Coverage?
Along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, First Focus and the Children’s Defense Fund, Georgetown University CCF held a press tele-conference and released a report examining an alarming trend in children’s health coverage. The report shows that more than 800,000 fewer children had Medicaid/CHIP coverage at the end of 2018 compared to 2017. This trend…
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Maternal Depression Costs Society Billions Each Year, New Model Finds
The most common pregnancy complication is also among the costliest, for moms, babies and society at large. A new cost model created by researchers at Mathematica finds that untreated mood and anxiety disorders among pregnant women and new moms cost about $14.2 billion for births in 2017, when following the mom and child pair for…
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National Academies Report Charts Pathway to Better Health Coverage for Adolescents
Sustaining investments in the health of children as they enter their second decade of life is sound public policy, according to a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Not only is adolescence — the developmental period roughly from the age of 10 to 24 — a time of immense…
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Trump Administration Leverages Medical Loss Ratio Requirements to Help Address Problem of Drug “Spread Pricing” in Medicaid Managed Care
In a welcome move, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued highly technical guidance on May 15, 2019 which could help address the inappropriate use of “spread pricing” by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in Medicaid managed care. Many managed care plans contract with PBMs to administer the pharmacy benefit for their enrollees. But…
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New Research Finds Medicaid Gains Help Lead to Healthier Mothers and Babies
(Following is the press release we issued today on a new report “Medicaid Expansion Fills the Gaps in Maternal Health Coverage Leading to Healthier Mothers and Babies” by Adam Searing and Donna Cohen Ross.) Medicaid helps fill the gaps in maternal health coverage and leads to healthier babies and mothers, according to a new report…
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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…
