Blog
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How the Wrong Medicaid Reforms Could Devastate Young People with Complex Medical Needs
By Sophia Jan, Ahaviah Glaser, Rebecca Kim of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Policy Lab Current proposals to simultaneously repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and reform the federal Medicaid program would be devastating to children and young adults with disabilities and complex medical needs. Even if the final ACA replacement plan continues to allow…
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ARKids First turns 20!
Originally posted by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. Twenty years ago today, on March 10, 1997, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee signed ARKids First into law. ARKids was Arkansas’s state-funded health insurance program, and bringing it to life was a monumental moment for kids and families in our state. ARKids filled in the gap for…
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Medicaid Provides Economic Security For Families
Our new fact sheet summarizes research on how Medicaid provides economic security for families. By making health insurance accessible to children and parents, Medicaid keeps families healthy and also protects them from financial hardship. That economic security has the added benefit of insulating children from some of the adverse experiences of growing-up in poverty that…
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Up All Night
By Rylin Rodgers, Riley Child Development Center When was the last time you were up all night worrying about something? I hope you had to think hard in order to answer that one because it’s been a while. For most of us, though, it probably wasn’t that long ago. Most of us have the experience of…
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Why “State Flexibility” Won’t Do the Trick to Implement Medicaid Cuts
There has always been a lot of overheated rhetoric about state flexibility in the Medicaid program, but at no point has it been more important to unpack that concept than now. With the House and Senate poised to act on a bill which caps the Medicaid program for the first time in its history, proponents…
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What Does House ACA Repeal Proposal Mean for Children and Families?
As the House of Representatives moves with rapid speed to pass legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the public can finally get a glimpse of their plan – though the public still needs a lot more information about the proposal and the “intended” and “unintended” consequences it would have for children and families. The…
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ACA Repeal Would Also Impact Kids Who Get Health Coverage Through Parent’s Employer
We often talk about how Medicaid is the MVP for children’s coverage – and it is – covering 37 million children today in Medicaid directly plus over half of children whose coverage is paid for by CHIP, for a total of 42 million kids. But if you look at public and private sources of coverage,…
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House GOP Medicaid Provisions Would Cut Federal Medicaid Spending by $560 Billion Over Next Decade
By Edwin Park, CBPP The House Republican health plan would shift an estimated $560 billion in Medicaid costs to states over the next ten years, effectively ending the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion for 11 million people while also harming tens of millions of additional seniors, people with disabilities, and children and parents who rely on…
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New CCF Fact Sheet Shows Medicaid Provides Needed Access to Health Care for Families
Our new fact sheet summarizes research on access to care in Medicaid. We find that children and parents who rely on Medicaid for health care receive coverage that is comparable to private insurance and far better than the access accorded uninsured families. Children covered by Medicaid and those with private insurance access health care services…
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Arizona Medicaid Waiver Amendment Does Not Include Analysis of Impact on Budget and Individuals
Arizona will shortly be submitting an amendment to its existing Section 1115 waiver that includes some very major and unprecedented changes to its Medicaid expansion such as the imposition of a work requirement (which has to be verified on a monthly basis!), and a five-year life- time limit on Medicaid benefits. The state also seeks…
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7 Questions Congress Should Answer Before Messing with Medicaid
Ok, all you Schoolhouse Rock fans, let’s sing along: “I’m just a Bill. Yes, I’m only a Bill. And I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it’s a long, long journey to the Capital City It’s a long, long wait while I’m sitting in committee.” That was true in 1976, when Bill made his debut.…
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Top Five Ways ACA Repeal and Medicaid Financing Changes Would Harm our Youngest Children
Editor’s note: We at Say Ahhh! are getting a lot of traction around our “top 5s” on Medicaid cuts and the impact of ACA repeal and Medicaid financing changes on child welfare. So we thought we should continue the trend and focus on young children. We are grateful our colleagues at CLASP agreed to join…
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CHIR Expert Testifies Before the House Committee on Small Business Regarding Enhancements to the ACA
By Emily Curran and Dania Palanker, originally posted on CHIRblog On February 7, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing titled, “Reimagining the Health Care Marketplace for America’s Small Businesses,” to discuss the challenges small businesses are facing in the health insurance marketplaces and to offer potential solutions for the next phase of…
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Nation’s Success in Covering Children is in Peril
House Republicans recently released an outline of their plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and today an earlier version of the bill they were drafting was leaked. While the leaked bill is likely an old draft, both of these documents confirm what I have suspected was coming — while repealing and replacing…
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Radically Restructuring Medicaid Would be Bad for Kids
While most press coverage has focused on repealing the Affordable Care Act and scaling back the Medicaid expansion for adults, a less well-known but extremely damaging effort under consideration by Congress would radically restructure Medicaid financing. Proposals would do this through a block grant or per capita cap designed to save money by limiting federal contributions. (Kaiser just put…
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Growth In Medicaid Spending Per Enrollee Is Low
A new fact sheet from the Commonwealth Fund, “Essential Facts About Health Reform Alternatives: Block Granting Medicaid,” makes compelling arguments about the dangers of block granting Medicaid. States would receive a fixed, preset amount of federal funds that would not change if the number of enrollees increase or if the cost of services rise. This…
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State Snapshots of Children’s Health Coverage
As Say Ahhh! readers well know, Medicaid and CHIP are a primary source of coverage for children, particularly the most vulnerable children. But even people who know the importance of our public coverage programs are often surprised to learn key statistics about Medicaid and CHIP. For example, did you know that: 57 percent of all…
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Congress Must Act Quickly on CHIP
As regular readers of SayAhhh! know, funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will expire on September 30, 2017. Medicaid and CHIP have worked together to bring the nation’s uninsurance rate for children down to a historic high of 95%. Whether the country will continue moving forward on this critical question is a key…
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TANF, CCDBG Demonstrate That Block Grants And Per Capita Caps Won’t Work For Medicaid
By Suzanne Wikle and Jessica Gehr of CLASP Congress is reportedly again considering proposals to change the fundamental structure of Medicaid, including by turning it into a block grant program or providing fixed allotments per recipient (“per capita caps”). Such proposals have been made repeatedly over the years, but consistently rejected. However, other programs with…
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Arizona is Trying to Impose a Lifetime Cap on Medicaid Coverage
By Jesse Cross-Call, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Arizona will soon send a proposal to the federal government to place a five-year lifetime limit on Medicaid coverage for adults under 65 who don’t have a disability. The government should reject the proposed time limit, which would lead to coverage losses and increase hardship among older, low-income…
