Blog
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Shop to Renew Health Coverage During Open Enrollment
By Sandy Ahn, Center on Health Insurance Reforms Similar to last year’s open enrollment, the federally facilitated marketplace (FFM) will automatically renew consumers into coverage if they do not go back to the marketplace to update their information and select a plan. This means that eligible consumers will be automatically re-enrolled into coverage and receive…
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$32 Million Now Available to Help Reach Eligible but Unenrolled Kids
Most uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but are not yet enrolled so finding them and helping them enroll is critical to successfully reducing the uninsured rate for children. As my colleague Tricia Brooks has pointed out many times, it is no secret that sustained outreach and enrollment support is the key to…
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Medicaid Expansion Would Help More Latino Families Succeed
By Steven Lopez, National Council of La Raza Latinos are the most uninsured population in the country. As the largest civil rights and advocacy organization in the nation, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) works to improve the lives of Hispanic Americans, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much they…
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Unpacking the Uninsured Kids Report: Breaking Down Data by Race
Since 2008, the number of uninsured kids has declined by 2.5 million children nationwide. Following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, 94 percent of all children have health insurance coverage. Still, there are 4.4 million children living in the United States without health coverage. Our report released last week, Children’s Health Insurance Rates in 2014:…
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More Evidence that Medicaid Expansion Helps State Budgets
Recently, Kaiser Family Foundation released a report on Medicaid Enrollment & Spending Growth for FY 2015 and 2016. There is a lot of interesting data in the report, but the stand out finding confirms what we already know: Medicaid expansion is good for state budgets and leads to increases in coverage. Medicaid Enrollment is up…
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While NC’s Governor Reverses Course on Medicaid Expansion, Some Conservative State Executives Move Ahead
In this excerpt of an interview late last week with WRAL-TV anchor David Crabtree, NC Governor Pat McCrory, when asked about Medicaid, said that expansion would now have to wait at least three years for health reforms to take place in the state. McCrory also highlighted an Oval Office meeting he and several other Governors had…
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Estimating 2016 Federal CHIP Allotments (and the bump!)
If you’re like us at CCF, you’ve been really curious about 2016 CHIP allotments under the recent CHIP extension in MACRA. We worked with our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to estimate federal allotments for the 2016 federal fiscal year (1st column), which began October 1, using state-reported May estimates of…
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Obama Administration Should Release Long Awaited CHIP/QHP Study
Some of you may remember that the Affordable Care Act included a provision that required the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review and certify the comparability of pediatric coverage of qualified health plans to the benefits and cost-sharing of CHIP plans in each state. In fact this analysis was supposed to be…
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Targeted Medicaid Enrollment Reaches More Kids
By Suzanne Wikle, CLASP The rate of children without health insurance has hit an all-time low of 6 percent, according to a new report from the Center for Children and Families. The drop is largely attributable to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and to states’ efforts to increase enrollment. States that have opted to expand Medicaid…
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Medicaid Expansion: Important Factor in Declining Uninsurance Rates for Children
Our report released last week (Children’s Health Insurance Rates in 2014: ACA Results in Significant Improvements) contained good news for people who share the belief that no child should ever be uninsured in our country – the national child uninsurance rate is now at a historic low of 6 percent. Kids haven’t quite caught up…
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Healthcare.Gov Promises a Snazzier Production for OE3
Yesterday marked the debut of the third open enrollment period for the Health Insurance Marketplaces, including Healthcare.gov, which is the storefront to the Marketplace in 37 states. Has the performance improved? What new bells and whistles will delight the audience? Faster lines at the box office. Although it looks the same to consumers, new account…
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Nondiscrimination and the Affordable Care Act
The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services released a proposed rule on Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act on September 8, 2015. Section 1557 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin (including immigration status and English language proficiency), sex, age, or disability in any program…
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CMS Issues Long-Awaited Medicaid Access Regulation
Today CMS issued the long-awaited final rule on access to covered Medicaid services. The rule describes the requirements under section 1902(a)(30)(A) of the Social Security Act, known as the “access requirement.” The access requirement provides that states must have methods and procedures to assure that payments to providers are “sufficient to enlist enough providers so…
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Child Uninsured Rate Hits Historic Low – Thanks Goes Mainly to ACA, Medicaid & CHIP
Like many of you I was super excited to see the first round of data from the Census Bureau looking at health insurance rates in 2014 when it came out in late September. Needless to say, 2014 was a big year for health policy changes! Today we are releasing our annual report focused specifically on…
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Wondering What Marketplace Rate Increases Mean for Consumers?
Yesterday, CMS announced that premium costs for 2016 Silver benchmark plans (that’s the second lowest cost Silver plan) will increase by an average of 7.5% compared to 2015. However, there is significant variability in the differences ranging from an average 12.6% drop in premiums in Indiana (yes, that’s minus 12.6%) to an average increase of…
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Arkansas Health Care Reform Task Force Considers Changes to Medicaid Private Option
By Marquita Little, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families Consultants for the Arkansas Health Care Reform Task Force released a new report recommending the Private Option become a transitional or temporary program focused on “moving people upward” to opportunities. This is on the heels of an earlier report noting the Private Option will save the…
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Half of the Uninsured are Eligible for ACA Coverage
by Jordan Messner, Graduate Research Intern The Kaiser Family Foundation published a report on October 13 examining the uninsured population in the United States and their options for coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The report found that although 32.3 million nonelderly people were uninsured at the beginning of 2015, 49% of these individuals (15.7…
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CMS Should Require More Transparency from Insurers
By Sean Miskell As the Affordable Care Act has been successful in its efforts to expand coverage to millions of Americans, the attention of policymakers, advocates, and families will increasingly turn to the value of this coverage and the nature of the choices available to those looking for insurance in the marketplace. The more data…
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North Carolina Infant Mortality Needs Bold Solutions, Not Business as Usual
by Rob Thompson, originally posted at NC Child The word “consistency” suggests stability, predictability, normalcy. It implies that we can move on and not worry. When the State of North Carolina announced our 2014 infant mortality data this week, the official release said “the 2014 statistics are consistent with previous years.” But for our state, consistency in the infant…
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Taking it to the streets: New ways to get uninsured kids enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP
by Sheila Hoag, Senior Researcher, and Debra Lipson, Senior Fellow, Mathematica Policy Research Traditionally, state and local Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) staff have conducted outreach to uninsured children eligible to help enroll them into these public coverage options. Advocates have also organized public education campaigns and enrollment events. Despite dramatic progress in…