Blog
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Proposed Health Bill Would Increase Consumer Debt and Drive Up Uncompensated Care
The Senate health bill ends retroactive eligibility, hospital presumptive eligibility, and any presumptive eligibility determination for expansion adults, which includes many parents. The end of retroactive eligibility and hospital presumptive eligibility will drive up consumer medical debt, which was the largest cause of U.S. bankruptcies prior to the Affordable Care Act. It will also drive…
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Doubling Down on Dialing Down on Children
Last Thursday, the Senate Leadership released a draft bill to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The draft is even worse for the 37 million children that Medicaid covers and the providers who serve them than the bill that narrowly passed the House. Not only would the draft dial down the federal payments to…
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Policymakers, Health Groups, and Jimmy Kimmel Say Medicaid Caps Won’t Work
Over the last week, many health care providers and policy makers have weighed in on the latest health care reform efforts in the Senate. All point to proposed Medicaid caps, which go well beyond the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and undermine well-established paths to coverage for children and families that were in place well before the…
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Reviewing the Evidence on the Value of Health Insurance
Some of our favorite health researchers—Ben Sommers, Atul Gawande, and Katherine Baicker–published an article this week in the New England Journal of Medicine sharing the most recent evidence on the effects of health insurance coverage, especially Medicaid coverage, to inform the national debate on health care. They review the most rigorous studies on how health…
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Senate Bill is Not Nice to Children and Families
There is a tremendous amount to digest here, and we are still working through the complex text, but one thing is clear – the Senate bill (like the House bill) will start moving the country backwards with respect to child and family coverage. Readers of Say Ahhh! know that the number of uninsured children is…
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The Medicaid Cap: “Carving Out” Medically Complex Kids Won’t Protect Them
The Senate Leadership is reportedly including a cap on federal Medicaid payments to states in its version of legislation to “repeal and replace” the ACA. That cap will apparently look a lot like the cap that narrowly passed the House in early May, but with some tweaks to accommodate concerns of individual Senators. One tweak…
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Candace Webb Joins Center for Children and Families Team
We are pleased to announce that Candace Webb has joined the staff at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families as a senior state health policy analyst. Candace comes to Georgetown University with a decade of experience in public health, most recently as the Western Services Branch Chief in the Division of State HIV/AIDS Programs…
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The AHCA Will Kill Jobs and Chill Economic Growth
The ongoing political debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act keeps me scratching my head on many fronts, one of which is the overwhelming body of evidence that the proposed replacement will cause real people to lose real jobs. The latest report on to catch my attention was an economic and employment analysis by the Commonwealth…
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States at Risk = Children and Families at Risk
It is a truth universally acknowledged that states don’t get sick, people get sick. But in a program like Medicaid, where the federal government and the states share in the cost of medical and long-term care services that people need, the fiscal fortunes of states and the health of beneficiaries are inextricably linked. If the…
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New Analysis Finds Uninsured Rate for Kids Would Increase by 50% Under AHCA
If the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) becomes law, the uninsured rate for children would increase by a whopping 50% by 2026 according to a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Center’s report is based on a deeper dive into the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the AHCA that was passed by…
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CMS Does Not Appear to Be Honoring Public Comment Requirement on Indiana Medicaid Waiver Request
My top-notch intern is checking the CMS website every day, and it looks like Friday June 9th, after regular business hours, federal CMS did two things with respect to Indiana’s desire to impose a work requirement on certain Medicaid beneficiaries and make other changes to their Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) 2.0 program. First, CMS certified the application…
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The Risk of Letting Politicians, Not Pediatricians, Determine Children’s Health Care
Fifty years ago, after learning that half the young men drafted for the Vietnam War failed baseline health exams, the federal government instituted Medicaid’s comprehensive, pediatrician-recommended benefit standard for children known as Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT). The federal benefit standard in Medicaid ensures that low-income and vulnerable children receive the health care services…
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Connecting the Dots: Capping Medicaid, Closing Rural Hospitals, and Stranding Rural Children and Families
The Senate was designed by our founding fathers to protect less populated states. Few would dispute that over the decades, the Senate has faithfully executed that institutional mission, especially when it comes to health policy. So it is completely mystifying that the Senate, according to all reports, is seriously considering capping federal Medicaid payments to…
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Medicaid is Increasingly Important for Kids and Families in Small Towns and Rural Communities
Since we started doing our annual report on uninsured children six years ago, the slightly higher overall rate for children living in rural areas has caught my eye. As a researcher, I always want to learn more about the populations that have higher uninsured rates. This year, with funding from the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, my…
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Public Firmly Opposed to Cutting Medicaid
The respected Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll released today confirms what we’ve been saying here at CCF for years – Medicaid is an extremely popular program that is a critical part of our health system. I recently detailed how Medicaid’s increasing importance to Americans has had a noticeable effect on health policy debates. Now…
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Medicaid Fills a Crucial Role in Rural America
A number of new resources have been published recently by other research organizations on the key role that Medicaid plays in providing coverage for residents of rural areas. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s report, “The Role of Medicaid in Rural America,” found that Medicaid helps overcome some of the unique challenges in rural areas including provider…
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How Many Will Be Impacted By Work Requirements: Indiana Gives Us The First Clue
As has been widely reported, there are a number of states seeking Section 1115 waivers to establish work requirements for their Medicaid expansion populations – and the Trump Administration has indicated that they are likely to say yes. In just the last week Arkansas and Indiana opened public comment periods at the state level for…
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It is Complicated. A Child’s View Can Guide Us.
By Rylin Rodgers, Riley Child Development Center Too often policy discussions and budget debates are framed in terms of winners and losers at the program, department, or budget line level. Families raising children who have health care needs and disabilities are impacted every day by public policy, systems, and services related to health care, education, housing,…
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No Doubt About It: Medicaid Capped, Uninsured Increased, and Taxes Cut
Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released their estimate of the House bill to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Senate, and seemingly much of Western Civilization, has been on CBO/JCT watch since the House of Representatives narrowly passed the bill on May 4 with…
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Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Repeal the Maintenance of Effort Provision
The President’s FY 2018 budget, released yesterday, proposed repealing the maintenance of effort (MOE) provision as of October 1, 2017. As readers of Say Ahhh! already know, the MOE has been critical to maintaining stability for children’s coverage – and even improving coverage levels – while the rest of the health care system in the…
