Say Ahhh!
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U.S. Achieves Another Historic Milestone: 95% of Kids Now Have Health Coverage
The rate of health coverage among children reached a historic high of 95 percent in 2015, according to new data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau.[1] Today’s numbers underscore how significantly the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid and CHIP have worked together to help more children get the health coverage they need to succeed.…
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Future of Children’s Health Coverage Series Brief #2: Rethinking Pediatric Dental Coverage
By Colin Reusch, Children’s Dental Health Project and Joan Alker, Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Last month, a U.S. Senator called children’s dental health “a huge issue people simply don’t think about very often.” Here at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and the Children’s Dental Health Project, we think it is time to…
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HHS Listens to Public, Sticks to Principles & Rejects Ohio Medicaid Waiver
The public spoke and HHS listened. That is my takeaway from today’s rejection of the state of Ohio’s Medicaid Section 1115 waiver proposal that would have created more barriers to needed health care for Medicaid beneficiaries and result in more uninsured Ohioans. Governor Kasich has staunchly defended Ohio’s Medicaid expansion which has contributed to a…
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Quality Provisions of the Medicaid/CHIP Managed Care Rules
Thanks to a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CCF has teamed up with NHeLP to launch a series of explainer briefs that unpack the new Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) managed care regulations. Three briefs in the series have been released already: Looking at the New Medicaid/CHIP Managed Care Regulations Through a Children’s Lens, Medicaid/CHIP…
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It’s Time to Comment on Your State’s Access Plan
September is here and as our kids go back to school, it’s time for us to work even harder to make sure they are getting the health care they need to show up to school ready to learn. Say Ahhh! readers will remember that CMS finalized the long-awaited Medicaid access rule last fall, requiring states…
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Kentucky Submits Proposed Medicaid Waiver
A couple months ago, Kentucky released the first version of its proposed Medicaid waiver for public comment and we pointed out several major problems with the proposal. Basically, the proposal contained elements like very high premiums and very high copayments, lockout periods where people would be denied health coverage and work (or involuntary “volunteer”) requirements:…
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Stabilizing the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces: Lessons from Medicare
By Sabrina Corlette and Jack Hoadley, originally posted on CHIRblog The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance marketplaces have been buffeted by bad news lately. A number of insurers are raising premium rates; others are withdrawing. But these marketplaces are not the first – nor likely the last – to go through a period of…
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Report Recommends a New Child-Centered Approach to Value-Based Payment in Medicaid
By Kate Breslin, Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy and Andrea G. Cohen, United Hospital Fund As part of its Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) waiver, New York Medicaid has set an ambitious goal to rapidly implement value-based payment across 80 percent of managed care payments by 2020. For all of the challenges associated with this huge…
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New Florida Legal Services Report Examines Financial Challenges to Health Care System
By Miriam Harmatz, Florida Legal Services My colleague, Charlotte Cassel, and I spend a lot of time explaining changes to Florida’s major supplemental payment program, the Low Income Pool (LIP) and how those changes impact individual counties. FLS Reports. Before we started this endeavor, I pulled out notes from training by iconic poverty and health…
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School-Based Outreach for Health Coverage Enrollment: New Guide Highlights Successful Strategies
By Shelby Gonzalez, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Across the country, children are stocking up on school supplies and teachers are preparing their classrooms and lesson plans. In addition to these traditional back-to-school activities, many school administrators and outreach groups are gearing up to raise awareness about the importance of health insurance and help…
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How One Florida Newspaper Went Beyond Reporting to Spur Original Research
(This blog was originally published by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.) By Maggie Clark, Sarasota Herald Tribune Some of the best ideas are the ones that initially sound the craziest. I was about four months in on my reporting on Florida’s Medicaid managed care program, and I was hitting a wall. I’d been…
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Advocates in Arizona and Florida Win Bulldog of Year Awards for Opening Doors to Coverage for Kids
Connecting with children’s advocates and health policy experts from across the country is the highlight of our annual conference for me. I am always inspired by the “doggedness” of our state partners to make children’s lives better. A few years ago, we started a tradition of opening the conference by presenting the “Bulldog of the…
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How the New Medicaid/CHIP Managed Care Regulations Seek to Improve Network Adequacy and Access to Services
Thanks to a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CCF has teamed up with NHeLP to launch a series of explainer briefs that unpack the new Medicaid/CHIP managed care regulations. Three briefs in the series have been released already: Looking at the New Medicaid/CHIP Managed Care Regulations Through a Children’s Lens, Medicaid/CHIP Managed Care…
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Medicaid Research Shows Positive Impact on Health & Financial Stability
At our Georgetown CCF conference last week, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel focused on the rapidly exploding research taking place around Medicaid. This research – a new study seems to come out almost every week – looks at a wide spectrum of effects from the Medicaid program. It includes documentation of not…
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CMS Turns Down Indiana Request to Lock People Out of Health Coverage Who Don’t Complete Renewal Process
While we at CCF were wrapping up our annual conference on Friday, CMS sent a letter to Governor Pence’s office turning down a request by the state to amend their Medicaid Section 1115 HIP 2.0 waiver in two ways that would have been harmful to beneficiaries. The first issue is especially of interest as we…
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Tax Policy, Budget Cuts Pose Health Risk to Kansas Children
By Amanda Gress, Kansas Action for Children Kansas policymakers’ refusal to revisit deep income tax cuts has once again harmed the health of Kansas children. In May, Governor Brownback announced a 4% reduction in reimbursement rates for KanCare, the state’s managed-care Medicaid program. These choices will ultimately make it more difficult for Kansas children covered…
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New Health Affairs Policy Brief Examines Regulation of Health Plan Provider Networks
By Justin Giovannelli, Kevin Lucia and Sabrina Corlette of the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reform Health insurance plans with limited networks of providers are common on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance marketplaces. The ACA’s consumer protections, along with online marketplace platforms that encourage insurers to compete on price, have led…
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Fixing the ‘Family Glitch’ Will Boost Economic Security for Low-Income Families and Increase Marketplace Stability
The ‘Family Glitch’ is back in health policy news with an updated estimate of the cost to fix it from researchers at the Urban Institute. This latest research, published in the July issue of Health Affairs, concludes that fixing the family glitch reduces family health spending but increases government costs. No surprise there; fixing the…
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CMS Approves Arizona Plan to Re-Open CHIP (KidsCare)
Today, Arizona “officially” joined the rest of the country as CMS approved its plan to re-open its CHIP plan. As Say Ahhh! readers know, new enrollment in Arizona’s CHIP plan (KidsCare) was frozen for several years. Now children living in all 50 states and DC will have the opportunity to sign up for CHIP coverage.…
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Recommended Changes to the 2017 Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures
As I noted in a blog last year, CMS reviews the Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures annually. Advising CMS’ quality activities is the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP), a public-private partnership convened by the National Quality Forum (NQF), a not-for-profit, nonpartisan, membership-based organization that works to catalyze improvements in health care. MAP is…
