Say Ahhh!
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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…
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Advancing Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health — One Relationship at a Time
As early childhood policymakers and advocates, we know that early relationships matter – a lot. We know that babies’ earliest relationships and experiences shape the architecture of the brain. Babies who engage with responsive, consistent and nurturing caregivers are more likely to have strong emotional health, or, infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH). Most…
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Will Congress Leave Children Out in the Cold?
The first snow fell in Washington this past weekend. As I felt the chill in the air, I thought about the millions of children who get their health coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). For many of these children, the mercury is about to plummet. Federal CHIP funding expired September 30, but here…
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Tracking Medicaid Work Requirement Proposals
We here at Georgetown University CCF are closely tracking Medicaid Section 1115 demonstration waiver proposals as states attempt to create new barriers to coverage. There are many troubling proposals pending, but one of the most common is the imposition of a work or community service requirement as a condition of Medicaid coverage. As a reference,…
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What Does the Continuing Resolution Mean for CHIP?
I wish I could say that the Continuing Resolution (CR) passed yesterday by the House and Senate extended CHIP funding for five more years as both parties in both chambers have agreed to do, but sadly, it does not. The main mission of the CR is to avoid a government shutdown, at least for the…
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No Set Federal Notice Period for CHIP – States Decide How Much Notice to Give Families Losing Coverage
According to a new brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation, at least five states (Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, and Utah) plan to end coverage for children enrolled in separate CHIP programs by January 31, 2017. One of those states (Colorado) has started to notify families that their children may lose coverage if Congress does not…
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Research Update: Checking Up on Health Care Utilization and Providers After the ACA’s Medicaid Expansion
This week, I am checking up on Medicaid research regarding health care utilization and providers. There is evidence that the expansion increased access and utilization of health care, led to an increase in smoking cessation, and increased the share of patients that physicians saw covered through Medicaid. Health Services Research’s Impact of Recent Medicaid Expansions…
