Say Ahhh!
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Healthcare.gov Fixes System Glitch in Counting Social Security Income for Certain Tax Dependents
Earlier this week, Health Affairs ran a lengthy blog I wrote about how Healthcare.gov incorrectly counts Social Security income for tax dependents who are not required to file taxes. Policy experts and enrollment assisters had suspected the system glitch existed for some time before CMS confirmed the error in early March. Thankfully, the problem is…
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Permanent 90% Federal Funding for IT Systems Is a Must For States to Achieve Medicaid Modernization
Medicaid modernization is a popular term used by states to describe how they are moving into the digital age to streamline eligibility and enrollment and improve operational efficiency. Technology is at the center of this transformation but the fact that many states have held on to 30-year old mainframe systems suggests that states won’t keep…
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Study: Medicaid Benefits are Well-Worth its Costs
By Sophia Duong A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, “Considering Whether Medicaid is Worth the Cost: Revisiting the Oregon Health Study,” finds that Medicaid is in fact a cost-effective program. The finding comes from researchers at Columbia University and New York University who analyzed data from the Oregon Health Study…
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Rules Propose Permanent 90% Federal Match for Medicaid Eligibility Systems: Tell HHS You Like It!
A year or so ago in a room of Ohio legislative staffers, I asked everyone under 30 to raise their hands. It was about 90% of the audience. I then said, “Your state’s Medicaid eligibility system is older than you.” And it was true, not only for Ohio, but also for many states across the…
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“Impossible to Argue Against” – The Significant Change in State Debates over Accepting Medicaid Funding
Last week I noted how two very unusual editorials at major newspapers in Tennessee and Florida indicated what I called a “debate turning point” on the Medicaid expansion funding issue. Since then there is more evidence of this turning point in both of these states – which haven’t yet accepted the federal money for expanded…
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Vikki Wachino Appointed to Officially Replace Cindy Mann at CMS
I am so happy to see that Vikki Wachino has accepted the position of Director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) at CMS. Vikki stepped into the role of Acting Director when Cindy Mann left the agency in January. Children’s health advocates will recall Vikki’s tenure as Director of the Children and…
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Armstrong v. Exceptional Child—The Supreme Court’s “Fairest Reading” Really Isn’t Fair
By Jane Perkins, Legal Director of National Health Law Program In 2009, the Exceptional Child Center and other providers of in-home supportive services for people with disabilities sued the Idaho Medicaid Director, Richard Armstrong, on the grounds that they were not being paid enough. According to the record in the case, the state set the providers’ rates…
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Navigator Grants for OE3 Announced
Today, CMS released the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for a new round of navigator grants. As noted in my blog earlier this week, these grants will be awarded for a period of three years unlike annual awards in the prior two grant rounds. A total of $67 million will be awarded in the first year,…
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Time to Raise a Glass: CHIP Funding Extension Headed to President’s Desk!
Late this evening, the Senate passed H.R.2, the compromise SGR-CHIP package passed by the House late last month, by an overwhelmingly strong vote (92-8). Most of the health policy world will be buzzing about the fact that this historic bipartisan achievement makes the SGR “doc fix” permanent, and that’s indeed a grand feat. But this…
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New Resource From CMS on Medicaid Managed Care
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services (CMS) released a wealth of information on Medicaid managed care, including guidance on managed care contracts and state-by-state profiles. The updated website section includes an overview of managed care delivery systems and regulations. In addition, the technical support tab provides a state guide to CMS criteria for…
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Report: Many Working Parents & Families Would Benefit if Florida Said Yes to Medicaid
I’m happy to be visiting Tallahassee today during “Children’s Week” just as Florida’s lawmakers are facing one of the most consequential decisions they could make for Florida’s children and working families. To help lawmakers understand what’s at stake, today we released a report with the Kids Well coalition explaining how expanding Medicaid would help uninsured…
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3-Year Navigator Grants Will Provide Stability to Enrollment Assistance
A recent posting of a Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) notice in the federal register details plans by CMS to tweak navigator entity reporting requirements, which I’ll say more about in a few minutes. But what really excited me about the notice – drumroll please – is that, in the supporting statement, CMS signaled its intent…
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Unusual Editorials Urging Acceptance of Medicaid Expansion Funding in Tennessee, Florida Show Debate Turning Point
On Friday and Saturday last week, two widely separated major state newspapers – the Tennessean and the Tampa Bay Times – published strikingly similar editorials calling for Medicaid expansion in their respective states. How unusual? The Tennessean’s editorial covered the majority of the newspaper’s front page with a bold headline at least three inches high.…
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New GAO Reports Add to Evidence on CHIP’s Success
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), which provides reports to Congress that evaluate federal policies, released two reports in the last week confirming what we already know about CHIP: it’s a vital coverage source to millions of kids and kids and families would be worse off without it. The first study, Coverage of Services and Costs…
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New Study Documents Positive Long-Term Effects of Medicaid Coverage
A new study from the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty provides further evidence that the Medicaid expansions in the 1980s and 1990s have positive long-term effects for children. The IRP study, conducted by researchers from the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, found that expanding Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women improves…
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Two Points: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Manatt Report on State Medicaid Savings
Working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Manatt analysts today released a report documenting the greater than $1.8 billion of state budget savings and increased revenues across eight states resulting from the decision to expand Medicaid. It’s a great report – well-documented and well worth reading – but two points really stood out for me…
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Fact-checking the Florida Medicaid Debate
There continues to be confusion and misinformation abounding in Florida on the issue of federal Medicaid funding. This year the state is giving up approximately $5 billion in federal funds that are available under the Affordable Care Act to extend Medicaid coverage to uninsured Floridians at no cost to the state. The only reason that…
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Access to Care in CHIP & Medicaid Strong (CCF’s C-SPAN Debut!)
This week started out on a high, since I had the pleasure of heading over to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to talk about my favorite topic of late: the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). (Shout out to my father, Larry Wright, who is arguably CSPAN’s #1 fan in Arkansas and could have only been more excited…
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Tennessee Senator Doug Overbey (R) Makes the Case for Insure Tennessee
In Tennessee, Governor Bill Haslam’s plan to use the Medicaid expansion funding available under the Affordable Care Act – the “Insure Tennessee” plan – is starting to move again this week. The Tennessee Justice Center put together this short excerpt of one of the leading Republican proponents of the Insure Tennessee plan making the case.…
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The Affordable Care Act and Entrepreneurship
By Sean Miskell This week, numerous media outlets reported that Senator Ted Cruz may sign up for health coverage through the insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While the Washington Post calls this development the “irony of all ironies” given Cruz’s seemingly unrelenting opposition to the ACA, this is exactly the kind…