Blog
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Florida’s Medicaid Budget: Just the Facts
In Florida, as in other states, there is a great deal of misinformation about how much the state pays for Medicaid. The program is jointly administered by both states and the federal government, and the feds pay for a majority of Medicaid’s costs in all states. However, some of Medicaid’s opponents obscure the federal government’s…
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New and Improved! A Special Enrollment Period for Some Caught in Medicaid Coverage Gap
As part of our Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Navigator Technical Assistance project, we’ve helped Navigators and assisters answer tough questions from consumers. Many questions focused on special enrollment periods (SEPs), including a new “tax season” SEP that applied to individuals who learned about the requirement to have coverage only when they found out they were…
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Of Course Medicaid Health Coverage Improves Patient Health
There’s an old public policy joke pointing out how sometimes issues that really aren’t debatable are portrayed as such in a media that strives to be evenhanded. It starts with a particularly dogmatic legislator declaring in committee that “the earth is flat” and who is then obviously contradicted by his peers. The headline on the story about the committee…
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More Eligible but Unenrolled Kids are Being Connected to Medicaid & CHIP Coverage
CMS just released 2013 participation rates for children in Medicaid and CHIP, as calculated by experts at the Urban Institute. We keep a close eye on this data as it provides important insights into how well states are reaching eligible but uninsured children (which are the majority of uninsured children). As Say Ahhh! readers well…
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The Bump in Federal CHIP Funding: A Chance to Invest Freed-Up State Funds in Kids
[Editor’s note: The joy of CHIP funding extension has CCFers breaking into song. We had a difficult time not headlining this post “All About that Bump,” to be sung “It’s all about that bump, ‘bout that bump, more funding” to this popular tune.] As the ink was drying on H.R. 2 (now Public Law 114-10),…
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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…