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  • King v Burwell: An Exercise in Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

    Guest

    By  Tim Westmoreland, Georgetown University O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Everyone within reach of an electronic device already knows that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) again today. Tax subsidies can continue to assist low-income people in States that do not establish their own insurance exchanges. The death spiral…

  • King, Access to Care, Alternative Plans – States Running Out of Excuses for Failing to Act on Medicaid

    Adam Searing

    The message from the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell case yesterday was pretty simple for people interested in following the Medicaid expansion debate in the states. Now that it’s clear access to affordable coverage is here to stay for people above the poverty line, states that haven’t taken the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid funding to extend…

  • Florida Governor Scott Drops LIP Lawsuit, Declares Victory???

    Joan Alker

    Acting right on the heels of the historic decision affirming the Affordable Care Act in King v. Burwell, Florida Governor Rick Scott withdrew his lawsuit against the Obama Administration on the state’s Low Income Pool. That was a wise decision in my view, as the suit had no merit (in my purely non-legal opinion). But…

  • Highest Court in the Land Upholds the Affordable Care Act (Twice)!

    Joan Alker

    Just like most of you, I took a deep breath when I saw the Supreme Court decision in King v Burwell announced today. Here at CCF, we all high-fived but now I’m lamenting the fact that we had to waste all of this time and energy worrying about what would happen if the opponents of…

  • Time to Celebrate! California Will Provide Health Coverage for All Kids, Regardless of Immigration Status

    Sonya Schwartz

    It is now time to uncork the champagne and celebrate! California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, signed a budget that includes health coverage for all low-income children, regardless of immigration status today. Under the signed budget, California will provide coverage for allow-income children regardless of immigration status. Coverage would begin in May 2016. The expansion is projected…

  • Parents Value Affordability and Benefits (not whole-family plans) in Children’s Coverage

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    Last week our colleagues at the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured released a new report that children’s advocates, in particular, will find helpful, if not surprising. Helpful because it allows us to hear directly from parents about their children’s coverage experiences and what they value most. Kaiser’s research team conducted 14 focus groups…

  • First Peek at Health Coverage Rates Post-ACA: Uninsurance Drop in 2014

    Alisa Chester

    Hot off the press! Today we get our first look at annual insurance coverage data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for 2014 and the results are in: fewer people were uninsured in 2014—the first year of full ACA implementation— than 2013. Children and adults in Medicaid expansion states had lower rates of uninsurance.…

  • Changes to the Affordable Care Act’s Health Plan Summaries – and More to Come

    JoAnn Volk

    One of the early reforms in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – and the most popular, by some polls – is the requirement that plans and insurers provide easy-to-read summaries of plan benefits, cost sharing and rules.  The Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) is a standardized, 8-page form that allows consumers to make apples-to-apples…

  • California Moving Toward Health Coverage for All Kids, Regardless of Immigration Status

    Sonya Schwartz

    While I was in Oakland, California meeting with child health advocates on Tuesday, we received great news about a big step forward for kids (no, it was not that the Oakland Warriors won the NBA playoffs!). State legislative leaders and the Governor announced a budget agreement that included a commitment to expand health coverage to…

  • California Moves to Cover All Children Regardless of Immigration Status Lessons From County Programs Paved the Way

    Guest

    By Gene Lewit On Tuesday in California, legislative leaders and the Governor agreed on a 2015-16 budget bill that would allow all otherwise-eligible children to enroll in the state’s Medicaid program, regardless of their immigration status. The agreement includes $40 million in funding for children’s coverage that would begin in May 2016. An estimated 170,000…

  • Waiting on King… what’s at stake?

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    It feels like déjà vu. The health policy world is waiting on pins and needles to see what the Supreme Court has to say about the viability of the Affordable Care Act. On possible decision days, all browsers are pointed to SCOTUSblog.com. But this time we are waiting for a decision in King v. Burwell…

  • How Can States Better Protect Consumers from Unexpected Health Care Charges?

    Jack Hoadley

    Even when consumers do their best to obtain services from providers in their health plan’s network, they may still face unexpected charges. Unexpected bills may show up when a consumer goes to a network hospital for emergency care, but is treated by a physician or other health professional who is not in the health plan’s…

  • Florida House Votes Down Senate Medicaid Plan Leaving Florida with Large Coverage Gap

    Joan Alker

    Today the Florida House voted down the Senate’s Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange plan that would have accepted federal Medicaid funds. The House’s rejection of the Senate plan follows a strong bipartisan vote in that chamber in favor earlier this week of 33-3. Both chambers have large Republican majorities. An estimated 669,000 Floridians will remain…

  • Advocates Join Mayor O’Neal’s Walk to Focus on Need to Expand Medicaid and Save Rural Hospitals

    Adam Searing

    Starting this week, Mayor Adam O’Neal of Belhaven began leading his second 283 mile walk from his small town in North Carolina to Washington DC. This year, several state health care advocates we know and admire including Laura Guerra-Cardus of the Children’s Defense Fund Texas, five other Texans and repeat walkers Adam Linker and Nicole…

  • Medicaid: A Sound Investment for Kids, Their Families and Their Futures

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    While our attention has been necessarily focused on extending CHIP funding (and working on the best ways to take advantage of the funding boost that came with it), Congress is engaged in another exercise that demands the attention of children’s health advocates. As in recent years, Medicaid is on the chopping block during budget negotiations,…

  • Broad Wisconsin Budget Coalition Backs BadgerCare Expansion

    Guest

    By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Coalition on Children and Families Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to expand its Medicaid coverage, known as “BadgerCare,” to include all adults up to 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL). The strong public support for expanding coverage and the substantial financial benefits of accepting increased federal funding will eventually…

  • Sustained Outreach is a Key to Success in Connecting Uninsured Kids to Coverage

    Tricia Brooks

    Medicaid and CHIP have been instrumental in driving the uninsured rate for children to all time low. In recent years, however, this progress has stalled nationally and even reversed in some states. It’s no secret that sustained outreach is key to success in connecting uninsured kids to coverage. So we were particularly pleased that Congress…

  • Florida’s LIP Medicaid Waiver Amendment Now Open for Public Comment – National Implications

    Joan Alker

    It’s hard to miss the ongoing debate about Florida’s Medicaid expansion and the related subject of how the federal government plans to respond to the state’s request for continued funding of its Low Income Pool. But it would be easy to miss that the federal government just opened that amendment up for public comment. As…

  • What, Exactly, is in that CHIP Extension?

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    It’s hard to believe it was just last month when Congress passed and President Obama signed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015, which extended CHIP funding for two additional years with no major structural or program changes. It funds the ACA’s 23%-point bump, extends CHIPRA’s child health quality provisions and outreach/enrollment…

  • Medicaid Managed Care Regs Released – Let the Reading Begin

    Cathy Hope

    While we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when CMS did not release the Medicaid and CHIP Managed Care proposed rules prior to the Memorial Day weekend, we have our work cut out for us the next few weeks (months) as CMS released 653 pages of proposed rules late yesterday.  Organizations have until July 27th…