Say Ahhh!
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Want to Reduce your State’s Infant Mortality Rate? Try Expanding Medicaid
Evidence continues to build on the benefits of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion for adults: improving health coverage and access, promoting family economic security, and creating peace of mind for the whole family (including, and especially, children). And here’s another study for the maternal and child health community: A new study published online last week in the American Journal…
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HEALTHY KIDS ACT (Helping Ensure Access for Little Ones, Toddlers and Hopeful Youth by Keeping Insurance Delivery Stable Act)
As we have noted in earlier posts, the Continuing Resolution (CR) passed on January 22 includes six years of funding for CHIP and other CHIP-related provisions that we’ll unpack here. Funding CHIP is now funded through federal fiscal year 2023, or September 30, 2023. Though the Secretary will have to determine the allotment amount for…
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Weaponizing Medicaid Paperwork
It turns out that CMS has a “Patients Over Paperwork” initiative, which the agency describes as “our effort to reduce administrative burden and improve the customer experience while putting patients first.” Who knew? If you’ve been following Administrator Verma’s crusade to condition Medicaid coverage on meeting requirements to document work, you would be quite surprised.…
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CHIP Extended for 6 Years – A Huge Relief but Long Overdue
The House and Senate finally passed a continuing resolution that extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years incorporating the policy language that is essentially the same as the deal that Senators Hatch and Wyden agreed to back in September.[1] The fact that CHIP was extended 114 days after funding expired is unprecedented and…
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What Does a Government Shutdown Mean for Medicaid and CHIP?
[Editor’s Note: If you reached this post while searching for information on how the current partial government shutdown is impacting health coverage, please read this new blog by Andy Schneider.] Even if you weren’t glued to CSPAN 2 on Friday night, you now know about the federal government shutdown. Many articles have been written about…
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Government Shutdown – Where Does CHIP Stand?
I am not sure why I thought I would find it cathartic to write a blog on a Friday night explaining what we know about where things stand on CHIP. It’s been hard to listen to all the political grandstanding as the government shutdown looms. I looked up the first blog I wrote saying that…
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A Ten Year CHIP Extension Presents a Rare Win-Win Opportunity for Congress
Two weeks ago, I blogged about a new CBO score for the KIDS Act – extending CHIP funding for 5 years was on sale for the bargain price of $800 million. Last week, CBO released another update – extending CHIP funding for 10 years would save $6 billion. The rationale for both scores is the…
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Study Documents How Medicaid Expansion Helps Keep Rural Hospitals Open
Comprehensive research in the journal Health Affairs was recently published looking at the effect of state Medicaid expansions on hospital closures. Focusing on especially rural hospitals, the authors conducted a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis, finding: “[T]he ACA’s Medicaid expansion was associated with improved hospital financial performance and substantially lower likelihoods of closure, especially in rural…
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Research Update: How Medicaid Coverage for Parents Benefits Children
This week, I am reading studies about the links between health coverage for parents and children. We are closely following new guidance from CMS on a Medicaid work requirement. Yesterday, Joan Alker explained how a work requirement will lead to coverage losses for parents and harm children. Indeed, the evidence is strong that Medicaid coverage…
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Trump Administration’s New Medicaid Work Requirement Policy Will Harm Families
Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance that radically alters Medicaid by allowing states to link Medicaid eligibility with work requirements. Essentially, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will allow states, using Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration waivers, to condition Medicaid eligibility on compliance with state-determined policies that require non-disabled adults…
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CBO Releases New CHIP Score
The hot news here at CCF today is the new CBO score for the bipartisan, bicameral 5-year CHIP deal – the KIDS Act – it now costs $800 million instead of $8.2 billion. And no, that is not a typo. This leaves a lot of people asking – what changed? Before getting into why the…
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Wisconsin’s Partial Medicaid Expansion Covers Far Fewer People at Much Greater Cost
Among the 19 states that have yet to expand Medicaid to all adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, Wisconsin is the only one that covers all adults that are below the poverty level. It’s a policy choice that compares favorably to the 18 other “non-expansion” states; however, Wisconsin’s partial expansion covers…
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Congress Approves CR but Fails to Pass Long-Term CHIP Funding
As Cathy Hope forecast in an earlier blog today, Congress passed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) today that will keep the government funded through January 19, 2018. The bill also includes a small amount of additional funding for CHIP, but it falls woefully short. Unlike the last CR, which as SayAhhh! readers already know simply…
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Research Update: Health Care Expenses from Families’ Budgets to Federal Budgets
This week, I am reading studies on how health coverage eases financial pressures on families’ budgets and how children fare in federal expenditures. Commonwealth Fund’s What’s at Stake: States’ Progress on Health Coverage and Access to Care, 2013–2016 This brief examines the progress made since the ACA, including increases in health coverage for children and…
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Short-Term Fix is Not Enough to Reassure Children and Families CHIP is Secure
Congress created a crisis when it failed to meet the deadline to extend CHIP funding on September 30, and they have been kicking the can down the road ever since. Their neglect has left states trying to hold their CHIP programs together as best they can under very difficult circumstances, while holding out hope that…
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The Tax Bill: Bad News for Marketplaces and Medicaid
The tax bill (H.R. 1, The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”) that Congress passed this week is about more than cutting taxes for corporations and high-income individuals, although it is definitely about that. It’s also about cutting health coverage for low-income children and families. The bill’s repeal of the tax penalty for not having health…
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New 50-state Report: Medicaid/CHIP Crucial for Infants and Toddlers and Their Parents
As we wait with bated breath to see whether Congress will pass a long-term CHIP funding extension before the holidays, a timely new report serves as a good reminder of importance of Medicaid and CHIP for our nation’s youngest children and their parents—and the very real possibilities that the gifts of this coverage could be taken…
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If Congress Fails to Fund CHIP Before Holidays, Children Likely to Lose Coverage in New Year
Funding for CHIP expired on September 30th of this year. Despite bipartisan agreement in both the House and the Senate on a five year extension of CHIP, Congress has still not managed to get the job done. CHIP is a block grant program, which means that unlike Medicaid, Congress must act to ensure that it gets…
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Michigan Medicaid Evaluation Has Important Lessons for States Considering Work Requirements
On Monday, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan (who are the official evaluators of the Healthy Michigan Plan) published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on the employment status of the adult Medicaid expansion population in Michigan. In a survey of 4,090 expansion adults, researchers found that…
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Senator-Elect Doug Jones Calls on Senate to Pass CHIP Funding
Jim Carnes is the Policy Director of the Arise Citizens’ Policy Project. Alabama voters are accustomed to the hot glare of national media attention, but not the warm glow. Doug Jones’ stunning upset victory over Roy Moore for Jeff Sessions’ U. S. Senate seat has cast our state in the most favorable light many of us…
