Blog
-
Clearing Up Confusion about the Impact of the CHIP Funding Rescission in Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Conference Agreement
In June, the Senate rejected a Trump Administration proposal to rescind federal funding for a variety of programs including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). At the time, we had raised significant concerns because the Administration’s rescission package would have eliminated $2 billion from CHIP’s Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. Those $2 billion in funds…
-
Clarifying Medicaid Billing Practices Can Help States Prioritize Young Children’s Healthy Emotional Development
Evidence continues to mount that healthy social and emotional development in infants and toddlers underpins a lifetime of healthy physical development. But Medicaid policy and practice solutions to improve infant and early childhood mental health are not always clear, even when the importance of early diagnosis and treatment is well understood. A new report by…
-
Proposed Rule Would Make Matters Worse for Immigrant Children Held in Detention – Comments Due Nov. 6
About a year ago, the Administration reversed longstanding immigration policy and started separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Over just a few months, thousands of children were separated from their parents. The issue drew a lot of media attention, as medical and child welfare experts pointed out that research shows the Administration…
-
Public Comments are Virtually Unanimous Against Mississippi’s Harmful Medicaid Proposal
Last month, federal CMS reopened the public comment period on Mississippi’s proposed Section 1115 Medicaid work requirements waiver at the same time as Kentucky’s comment period was reopened. Mississippi’s proposal has not garnered as much attention as Kentucky’s, which as regular readers of SayAhhh! know, is currently on hold due to a federal court decision.…
-
New Census Data Reveal Troubling Signs for Children’s Health Coverage
Last week, the Census Bureau partially released the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) health insurance data. In the past we have celebrated dramatic gains in health coverage for children as the share of uninsured children continued to decline. But this…
-
Next Effort to Repeal ACA Would Likely Look Like Last One
Unsurprisingly, according to recent news reports (here and here), Congressional Republicans plan to pursue another attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act next year if they maintain control of Congress after the midterm elections in November. Any repeal effort would likely be based on the 2017 bills from Senators Cassidy and Graham and a somewhat…
-
Coverage Losses Begin From Mean-spirited Trump Administration Medicaid Policy
The first round of data just released by the state of Arkansas (the first state nationwide to implement a work requirement with a lockout) shows that 4,353 adults lost coverage retroactively to September 1st. The data continue to show a clear lack of awareness about the new reporting requirements with thousands more set to lose…
-
Who Are Florida’s Remaining Uninsured Children?
Last fall we wrote an issue brief about children’s health coverage in Florida. Florida’s child uninsured rate has reached a new low of 6.2% – although the state still lags behind the national average of 4.5% and has one of the highest uninsured rates in the South. This progress is the result of years of…
-
Dismissal of Co-Chair of Iowa Medicaid Advisory Panel is Setback for Much Needed Oversight
Medicaid is evolving. Its consumer advisory committees should too. State Medicaid programs are bureaucracies, and it’s understandable that agency leaders may not always have a pulse on what’s happening with members and providers and plans at any given moment. That’s why federal law has long required states to set up medical care advisory committees (MCACs),…
-
Louisiana Report: 2016 Medicaid Expansion Cut Adult Uninsured Rate in Half, Reduced Coverage Disparities, Benefited Rural and Urban Areas
A new report from the Louisiana Department of Health, the 2017 Louisiana Health Insurance Survey, shows multiple positive effects from Louisiana’s recent Medicaid expansion – and continuing overall satisfaction with Medicaid and other coverage. While the report focused on adult coverage, it also noted that Louisiana retains its remarkable success at reducing the uninsured rate…
-
Lawsuit Threatens Affordable Care Act Preexisting Condition Protections But Impact Will Depend on Where You Live
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been polarizing, but its provisions designed to help people obtain coverage regardless of health status are consistently popular. Nevertheless, ACA opponents continue to target the law’s pre-existing condition protections. On September 5, a federal district court in Texas will hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by Republican governors and attorneys general in…
-
Medicaid Expansion: The Facts Are In
With 34 states (including DC) now expanding Medicaid since 2014 and 17 states still refusing expansion, the ability for researchers to compare patient experiences in these disparate two groups of states has resulted in literally hundreds of high-quality studies – a “natural experiment” created by the Supreme Court’s decision to make the expansion optional. A…
-
Thousands of Arkansans Face Losing Health Coverage Due to New Red Tape Rules
[Editor’s Note: According to the latest press reports, more than 4,500 Arkansas Works enrollees lost their health coverage for failing to comply with the program’s work requirement for three months. CCF staff will continue to monitor this situation and update readers when more information is available.] Thousands of adults in Arkansas will likely lose their…
-
Growth in Medicaid Participation Rates of Uninsured Children Slows, while Parent Participation Rates Stall
In 2016, the percent of eligible, uninsured children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP inched up from 93.1 percent to 93.7 percent, according to a new report in Health Affairs from researchers at the Urban Institute. The six-tenths of a percent increase between 2015 and 2016 follows two years of annual gains of greater than two…
-
Exciting News: CMS Announces First Innovation Model Grants Aimed at Children and Youth
CMS has announced that it will launch a new innovation model funding opportunity this fall as part of a multi-prong response to the opioid crisis. The Integrated Care for Kids (InCK) Model aims to reduce expenditures and improve the quality of care for children under 21 years of age covered by Medicaid and the Children’s…
-
Medicaid and Early Learning: Complex Systems at Play in Washington State
Editor’s Note: Shannon Blood is the early learning and home visiting program manager in Washington’s Medicaid agency. We were excited to know of the state’s decision to dedicate a Medicaid staff to young children—even more exciting since Shannon came to the agency from the early learning sector. So we asked her to share her initial takeaways…
-
Analysis of Ohio’s report on Medicaid expansion
On Tuesday, August 21, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) released the second “assessment” of the Medicaid expansion as a follow-up to the first, General Assembly required, assessment from 2016. In this document the ODM found the following: EMPLOYMENT Employment for enrollees went up 15%, meaning 1 in 2 expansion enrollees are working The most common reason for…
-
CMS Receives Outpouring of Public Comments on Kentucky and Mississippi Medicaid Waivers (Including some from us here at CCF!)
The public has spoken! When the public comment period closed on the Kentucky and Mississippi Medicaid waivers this weekend, a whopping 11,700+ comments had been submitted on Kentucky’s and 330+ were submitted on Mississippi’s. While the Mississippi numbers were not as eye-popping as Kentucky’s, it’s important to view that number in context — as only…
-
New Georgetown Report: Insurance Brokers’ Perspectives on Changes to Individual Health Insurance
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) ushered in a range of consumer protections designed to make it easier for individuals to obtain affordable, adequate health insurance in the individual market. In many states, however, individual market consumers have faced increasingly limited plan choices, relatively narrow provider networks, and rising unsubsidized premiums. In the past year, policy…
-
After Two Months Under New Work Requirements, Thousands of Arkansans May Lose Medicaid Without Even Realizing the Rules Changed
Arkansas’s Department of Human Services released numbers on its work requirement late Tuesday and they continue to suggest that the rollout of the new work requirements policy is extremely flawed and that thousands could lose coverage by September 1. Since this is now the second month of the work requirement rollout, a large group of…
