Blog
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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…
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The President’s Immigration Announcement: What Do Health Policy Wonks Need to Know?
Last Thursday, President Obama announced immigration reforms that will provide up to five million people with relief from deportation and work authorization. While the reforms will do much to alleviate the constant fear of separation that many immigrant families face, most people included in the reforms will not be eligible for federal health coverage affordability…
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OIG Report: States, Feds Must Do More to Ensure Kids on Medicaid Get Essential Screenings
By Sean Miskell The Medicaid program includes screening requirements intended to ensure that any developmental or medical issues children encounter are identified and addressed by health care providers. However, a new report from a federal watchdog finds that both the states and the federal government must do more to guarantee that children are receiving these…
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Medicaid Expansion: Post Election Discussion in Some States Maturing from Political to Practical
Last week the New York Times editorialized on “The Fate of Medicaid Expansion” arguing that such efforts had “suffered a blow in the midterm elections” and that the odds for expansion “have grown longer.” The Times was echoing a general strain of conventional wisdom since the midterms following the reelection of governors who are expansion…
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How Could Executive Action on Parents Reduce the Number of Uninsured Citizen Kids?
Here’s something that most news stories on President Obama’s Executive Order probably are not touching on — protecting several million parents from deportation is likely to reduce the number of uninsured kids – the vast majority of them citizens. As child health experts, we have pointed out for years that reducing the number of uninsured…
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House Companion Bill Introduced to Extend Primary Care Rate Bump
By Sophia Duong Earlier this week, Representative Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) introduced the Ensuring Access to Primary Care for Women & Children Act (H.R. 5723), a bill aimed at continuing the Medicaid primary care increase for 2015 and 2016. The primary care bump is set to expire at the end of this year. H.R. 5723 also…
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New Report on States’ Oversight of Health Plan Network Adequacy
At yesterday’s National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s (NAIC) national meeting, the consumer representatives to the NAIC released a report on state approaches to regulating and monitoring the adequacy of health plan provider networks. The report, made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, summarizes the results of a survey sent…
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States Try Innovative Approaches to Identify and Treat Maternal Depression
By Sophia Duong Maternal depression imposes serious risks to a child’s development, as Dr. Olivia Golden from the Urban Institute noted in a previous blog post. Dr. Golden not only covers the effects on children’s cognitive, psychosocial, and behavioral development, she also cites that maternal depression is highly prevalent among low-income mothers. Without treatment, mothers…
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Consumers Should Resist the Urge to Do Nothing and Renew Coverage through the Federal Marketplace
When enrollment reopens in the health insurance marketplaces in just a few days, the 7-8 million current enrollees will have an opportunity to make sure they get the right amount of financial assistance and are enrolled in a plan that best fits their needs for 2015. This new brief outlines the process for consumers in…