Say Ahhh!
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49 National Groups to MACPAC: Keep CHIP While Improving Exchanges for Kids
Compared to what?! – This line is a favorite of my four-year-old from the popular Marcel the Shell with Shoes On web series. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing as I have many times, Marcel makes funny observations about his role and size in the world. The full quote (which you can see…
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Tennessee Proposal Highlights Importance of Medicaid Expansion for Residents and Providers
By Sean Miskell This week, Governor Haslam announced his plan to expand Medicaid via a two-year pilot program called Insure Tennessee. Like other formerly recalcitrant states that are now embracing expansion, Tennessee is pursuing a state-specific approach that differs from ‘traditional’ Medicaid expansion. One element of this plan – in which the Tennessee Hospital Association…
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Reports this Week: Multiple States Mulling Medicaid Expansion
There has been some interesting movement this past week around the Medicaid expansion issue, especially in Tennessee. One emerging theme continues – development of state-created alternative plans to use the Medicaid dollars while still extending health coverage to newly eligible low-income adults. Here are some of the more interesting stories: Obviously Tennessee leads here with…
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CDC Survey Shows Uninsured Rate Continues to Drop for Adults, Remains Steady for Kids
Yesterday we heard more good news about declining uninsured rates for adults – especially in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act – while uninsured rates for children continue to hold steady. These were some of the findings included in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) report for the first six months of…
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How Do Minimum Essential Coverage and Minimum Value Tests Impact Consumers with Employer-Offered Coverage
By JoAnn Volk and Sandy Ahn, Center on Health Insurance Reforms Open enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplaces overlaps this year with many employer plan open enrollment periods, which has prompted some employees to ask questions about how their offer of employer coverage may affect their eligibility for premium tax credits for a marketplace plan.…
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Communicating the Connection between Parent’s and Children’s Health in States Expanding Medicaid
By Liane Wong, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation It should be common sense to say that policies and programs which improve the health and well-being of parents will also help their children, right? I recently joined the Aspen Institute’s ThinkXChange to discuss priorities and emerging opportunities across the country to develop two generation approaches—where…
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How Much is the Federal Government Spending on Children?
December’s issue of Health Affairs is dedicated to the subject of children’s health, particularly how children fare in the national health care system. The Scheduled Squeeze On Children’s Programs: Tracking The Implications of Projected Federal Spending Patterns, written by Urban Institute scholars C. Eugene Steuerle and Julia B. Isaacs, reviews how the federal government funds…
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A Step Forward For Lawfully Present Immigrants Living in Poverty
It’s no secret that during last year’s open enrollment many applicants for health coverage in immigrant families faced major barriers to enrolling in marketplace coverage. One big problem was that lawfully present immigrants with income under 100 percent FPL—who are ineligible for Medicaid based on their immigration status but are eligible for premium tax credits…
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Governors Overwhelmingly Support CHIP, Offer Recommendations
While many of us were eagerly watching the House CHIP hearing last week, the House Energy and Commerce and Senate Finance Committees released the full set of governors responses to the summer Congressional inquiry on CHIP. Naturally, we were eager to see what they had to say! We read through the 39 letters intently to…
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State-Based Marketplaces Offer More Health Plan Options for 2015
By Sean Miskell The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to make quality health coverage more affordable and accessible, in part by promoting competition among insurers in the law’s new marketplaces. By providing consumers with a portal through which to compare plans and obtain financial assistance with the cost of coverage, policymakers hoped the marketplaces…
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House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on the Future of CHIP, Releases Governors’ Letters
It has been a while since I witnessed a Congressional hearing on health care that was not contentious. Courtesy and bipartisanship were on full display at the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee this week on the future of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). That’s not to say that renewing CHIP funding will be…
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Why Does Florida Still Have one of Highest Uninsured Rates for Kids? What Can be Done to Help?
Earlier this week I released a brief and held a webinar with the Florida Philanthropic Network on Florida’s uninsured children. The brief provides an overview of the demographics of Florida’s kids and outlines some policy decisions that will impact Florida’s high uninsured rate in the future. It will come as no surprise to regular Say Ahhh!…
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Wyoming’s SHARE Plan: Politics and Policy Driving Creation of Governor’s Proposal to use Federal Medicaid Expansion Funding
Wyoming Governor Matt Mead is no fan of the Affordable Care Act. He led the state into joining the multistate suit against the ACA and isn’t shy about sharing his opinion. Despite this, practical considerations around cost and the continuing number of uninsured Wyomingites have led him to carefully construct a state-specific proposal for using…
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Utah, Wyoming and Idaho: State Plans for using federal Medicaid Expansion Dollars
Here are copies of the proposed plans Governor Mead in Wyoming and Governor Herbert in Utah recently released for using the federal Medicaid expansion dollars under the Affordable Care Act: Healthy Utah Plan Wyoming SHARE Plan And here’s a copy of the proposed plan presented by the Governor’s own workgroup on Medicaid to Idaho Governor…
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Wyoming Medicaid Waiver Could Pass Muster with CMS
Just as everyone was preparing Thanksgiving dinner, the state of Wyoming released its version of Medicaid expansion – called the Strategy for Health, Access, Responsibility, and Employment (SHARE) program. As is in vogue with this round of Medicaid expansion proposals, this one will require a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver, but unlike some recent submissions, Wyoming’s…
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A Two-Generation Approach to Behavioral Health Helps Children and Parents in North Carolina
By Sophia Duong Research has shown that parents’ behavioral health significantly impacts their children’s development, but for many low-income parents it is difficult to seek behavioral health treatment without health coverage. My home state of North Carolina recognizes the connection between parent and child health, and provides a child-parent treatment approach through Medicaid. In North…
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New Policy Brief: Resolving Enrollment Conflicts as States Expand Medicaid
As some states start to expand Medicaid after January 1, 2014 they face an enrollment issue for newly eligible adults between 100-138% Federal Poverty Level who are already enrolled in a marketplace health plan. These people need to move from their current subsidized health plan into Medicaid but there are programmatic barriers as to how…
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New Policy Brief Outlines Strategies to Improve Children’s Oral Health
By Colin Reusch, Children’s Dental Health Project Despite evidence that access to dental care in Medicaid and CHIP is on the rise, tooth decay remains the most common chronic condition among children. And while tooth decay is especially prevalent among children of low-income families, less than half of all children enrolled in Medicaid see a…
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HHS Proposes EHB Rule Changes
By Joe Touschner Though the Institute of Medicine, the administration, and many states spent more than a year developing the essential health benefits, the resulting approach was intended to be temporary. The “benchmark plan” method for choosing the EHBs initially applied to plan years 2014 and 2015, with a review of the approach promised for…
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MACPAC Seeks Stakeholder Input on Children’s Coverage
As we contemplate what’s ahead for children’s coverage— CHIP most urgently— it is instructive to know what issues are being weighed by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), created by CHIPRA. Of course, MACPAC’s June report made clear that CHIP funding should continue until availability, affordability, and quality of coverage in the…