Blog
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Kaiser Family Foundation 50-State Budget Survey Provides Insight Into Medicaid Trends
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual 50-state budget survey is here! This year, they’ve captured the findings in three reports – Medicaid Enrollment & Spending Growth: FY 2017 & 2018, providing an analysis of national trends in Medicaid enrollment and spending; Medicaid Moving Ahead in Uncertain Times, taking a more detailed look at the policy and…
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It’s Not Time to Give Away Consumer Protections for Cost-Sharing Reduction Reimbursements
A whirlwind of activity following the White House announcement that cost-sharing reduction (CSR) reimbursements would no longer be made has culminated, at least for now, in a bipartisan agreement in the Senate to appropriate the payments for two years. While the legislation negotiated by Senators Alexander and Murray had 24 co-sponsors as of October 19, it is unclear…
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Research Update: Health Care in Rural and Urban America
CCF is starting a new series on research in health policy. I will regularly highlight some of the new research that I have been reading. This week, I am reading studies comparing health care and poverty in rural and urban parts of the country. AHRQ’s National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report: Chartbook on Rural Health…
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Continued Congressional Inaction on CHIP Underscores Need for Change in Priorities
Last week, as has been widely reported, President Trump issued an Executive Order allowing short-term insurance plans to be offered for up to an entire year and the sale of association health plans. As my colleague, Sabrina Corlette, wrote in US News & World Report, “The executive order sets the stage for new health plans…
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New Data Shows Child Health Coverage Rate Racial Disparities are Narrowing
Last month, the Center for Children and Families reported that almost 2 million children have gained health insurance since the implementation of the major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. More good news from our colleagues at the Commonwealth Fund: in their analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, researchers found that racial…
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New York Advocates Explore What Children Need in “First 1,000 Days”
In August, New York State convened a “First 1,000 Days” on Medicaid initiative, to generate recommendations to improve health for young children covered by Medicaid – with explicit interest in outcomes that are long-term and cross-sector, extending beyond health and medical issues. I am helping to lead this effort, which involves dozens of leaders and…
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What’s next for CHIP?
With both the House and Senate committees of jurisdiction reporting out CHIP bills last week, what needs to happen next to get CHIP done? Students of Schoolhouse Rock know that it’s very difficult for a bill to become a law – there are many steps that have to be taken. And while it’s a good…
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New Executive Order: Expanding Access to Short-Term Health Plans Is Bad for Consumers and the Individual Market
On October 12, 2017, President Trump signed a “very major” executive order related to health care that is “going to cover a lot of territory.” The executive order takes steps to roll back a consumer protection related to short-term health plans, in addition to allowing the sale of association health plans that are unregulated by the states and do…
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Trump’s Executive Order: Can Association Health Plans Accomplish What Congress Could Not?
Within days of the failure of the Graham-Cassidy legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Trump announced that he would likely sign an executive order to allow individuals and small employers to purchase health insurance across state lines through associations. Senator Rand Paul (R–Ky.), among others, has pushed the idea that the Trump administration can accomplish by…
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New Report Documents Growing Role CHIP Plays in Lives of Kids Across NY State, Underscores Need to Continue Funding
The September 30 expiration of federal CHIP funding puts the New York program, Child Health Plus (CHP) in a precarious situation. Data from the new UHF HealthWatch brief, The Curve Bends Back Up, Sharply, suggests that CHP is growing in its importance – which means insurance coverage is at risk for more New York children…
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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…
