Say Ahhh!
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CHIP is Moving Ahead But Will Congress Get to the Finish Line in Time?
Late last night House Republicans released text of their bill (the Healthy Kids Act) to extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and they are proceeding rapidly to mark up tomorrow in the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Senate Finance Committee is also marking up their bill, the KIDS Act, tomorrow. The very…
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The Medicaid Expansion is Good for Parents AND Good for Children
Parents and children are more likely to have health coverage now than they were before the Affordable Care Act took effect. The Urban Institute released new research that shows the rate of insurance coverage for parents and children increased significantly between June/September 2013 and March 2017. During the time period, the rate of coverage increased…
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Governor LePage’s Medicaid Proposal Would Harm Low-Income Mainers
Governor Paul LePage’s proposal for harsh changes in the state’s Medicaid program, known as MaineCare, would restrict access to health care for many low-income Mainers. Maine is one of 19 states that haven’t adopted the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) Medicaid expansion, leaving most poor adults without a coverage option. The governor’s proposal would make it…
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Who Are the Uninsured Adults?
Last week we posted a piece about the shrinking pool of uninsured adults, based on a Health Affairs study showing that the rate of adults without insurance dropped from 16 percent to 7 percent in states that took the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Hidden at the end of this Health Affairs study, is a…
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Cutting Medicaid Unpopular Among Republicans, Democrats and Independents
I’ve written before about how popular the Medicaid program has become and how firmly opposed the public is to cutting Medicaid. One unanticipated outcome of the last two months of debate on in Congress around bills that would have cut Medicaid substantially in the process of “repealing” the Affordable Care Act has been the willingness…
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Graham-Cassidy: A Triple Whammy for Children and Families
When Senators Graham (R-SC) and Cassidy (R-LA) released their proposal to “repeal and replace” the ACA, we had our doubts about just how helpful it would be for children and families, but wanted to wait for the official word from CBO. Now we know. CBO has issued a “Preliminary Analysis” that leaves no doubt that…
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Medicaid Expansion Enrollees Drive Down the Uninsured Rate, Cost Less to Cover
The Medicaid expansion has been particularly successful at covering uninsured adults. According to new research in Health Affairs that used data from the Health Reform Monitoring Survey, expansion states saw a decrease in their rate of uninsured adults from about 16% during the third quarter of 2013 to 7% in the first quarter of 2017.…
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States Say They Will Run Out of CHIP Funds Faster than Projected; Will Congress Act in Time?
Ten states project they will run out of CHIP funds before the end of 2017 according to a new brief released by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), based on responses from 42 states during the KFF’s annual Medicaid budget survey. The ten states are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Utah.…
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Stability of Children’s Coverage Threatened if Congress Doesn’t Act by Saturday
As readers of SayAhhh! already know, the maintenance of effort (MOE) provision in the Affordable Care Act has been one of the key policies to help bring the uninsured rate for kids down to historic lows – 95.5% of children had health insurance in 2016. This decline is largely attributable to Medicaid, CHIP, and the…
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Florida Makes Significant Progress on Children’s Health Coverage But It is at Risk
Our latest brief looks how Florida has cut its rate of uninsured children by more than half since 2009. The rate dropped from 14.8 percent to 6.2 percent in 2016, an all-time low. In raw numbers, that means the state went from having 601,000 uninsured kids to 257,000. Much of that progress can be attributed…
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Graham-Cassidy Would Unravel Innovative and Smart Investments in Young Children
As we celebrate the good news of the highest health coverage levels on record for children, the latest ACA repeal effort in Congress once again threatens to destabilize the foundation of coverage for our nation’s children. We’ve written before about the ways that structural changes to Medicaid through block grants or caps will harm young…
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The Medicaid Cap: Still a Terrible Idea for Children and Families
The Senate Majority Leader has announced his intention to take up the Graham-Cassidy proposal next week. The proposal has lots of moving parts. None of them are kid- or family-friendly. And one of them—the cap on federal Medicaid payments to states—is not only very unfriendly, but it will last forever. The cap first emerged in…
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Graham-Cassidy’s Waiver Program Allows States to Erase Protections for People with Pre-existing Conditions
By Justin Giovannelli, Sabrina Corlette, Kevin Lucia and JoAnn Volk Legislation introduced last week by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (SC) and Bill Cassidy (LA) goes about the task of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) somewhat differently than the bills previously taken up by the House and Senate, but its approach is no…
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CHIP Benefit Standards Won’t Protect Consumers in Graham-Cassidy Plan
Listening to the sponsors of Graham-Cassidy suggests that coverage for low-income individuals will be based on CHIP benefit standards and, of course, everyone loves CHIP, right? In fact, the proposed legislation does NOT ensure that Marketplace and Medicaid expansion enrollees will get benefits that are equivalent to CHIP in a given state. Nor does it…
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Children Would Fall Through Cracks if Graham-Cassidy Becomes Law
There’s much ado in the news today about what the “Graham-Cassidy” plan does with respect to CHIP. Two impacts of Graham-Cassidy on CHIP are very clear. First, by cutting Medicaid, Graham-Cassidy would undermine the foundation upon which CHIP sits. Medicaid covers four times as many children as CHIP, so cutting Medicaid by imposing a per-capita…
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Jimmy Kimmel Calls Out Graham-Cassidy for Failing to Protect Kids with Pre-Existing Conditions
It’s déjà vu in D.C. as the Senate tries again to pass a ACA repeal and gut Medicaid through Graham-Cassidy—a bill that’s arguably worse for kids, families, and states than previous attempts. Even as many have tired of the whiplash, it cannot be understated that this new threat is as serious as those over the…
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Hatch-Wyden Draft Bill to Extend CHIP Released
Although the renewed focus on Graham-Cassidy threatens to derail timely action on CHIP, a draft of bipartisan legislative language from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to extend CHIP has been released. In keeping with the positive signals that we’ve been hearing about, the draft bill known as…
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New Urban Institute Interactive Analysis Shows Rising Cost for Families Using Employer-Sponsored Insurance
It’s no secret that private health insurance is expensive and that, over time, employers have passed more and more of the cost onto workers and their families. Still, when federal policy changes are being contemplated, there is often the sense that families have access to employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) to fall back on. This is especially…
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Progress on CHIP Extension Threatened by Graham-Cassidy Repeal Effort
Though we were optimistic about the chances of swift, bipartisan action on CHIP last week, that optimism has waned as the partisan rhetoric around repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act has heated up again. The simple fact of the matter is that you cannot have movement on these two initiatives at once. Unfortunately, the…
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Graham-Cassidy: The Wrong Prescription for Children and Families
Many of us thought that the effort to “repeal and replace” the ACA died on the Senate floor in July. Maybe not. This past Wednesday, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), joined by two other Republican Senators, released yet another “repeal and replace” proposal. The Senators hope to take their proposal to the…
