Say Ahhh!
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State Reporting on Child Health Quality Measures Improves Considerably
The 2009 CHIP Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) introduced a number of useful tools and incentives to advance and improve children’s health coverage including the development of a standardized set of children’s health quality measures. Last fall, while we were all engrossed in the rollout of the health insurance marketplaces, HHS released the 2013 Annual Report on…
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Many Foster Youth Rely on Medicaid to Meet Behavioral Health Care Needs
If you have seen Short Term 12, an indie film darling making the rounds on Netflix, then you know the importance of behavioral healthcare for youth in foster care and those who have just aged out of foster care. The film follows Grace (Brie Larson) working at a group home for teenagers who are in…
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Seven Steps to Improve Enrollment for the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Community
By Naomi Stark, Georgetown CCF Research Assistant The Affordable Care Act provided an enormous opportunity for coverage of many immigrant and mixed status families eligible for premium tax credits in the health insurance marketplace. However, due to a variety of enrollment barriers, many of those eligible for these critical benefits are unable to enroll. Action for…
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Kaiser Releases Report on Impact of CHIP and Medicaid on Kids
By Keanan Lane September 2015 continues to draw closer, and with it, the question over whether funding for CHIP will be extended. As the discussion develops into a wider and more hotly contested debate, it will be important to bring out the evidence on how CHIP has proven effective in providing insurance access to children,…
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As Clock Ticks on CHIP Funding, Experts Work to Explain its Importance to Kids
The Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid are the MVPs of children’s coverage. About 8 million children with low to moderate incomes are covered by CHIP while 39 million children are covered under Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act built upon the success of these two vital health coverage programs in many ways including an extension…
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Indiana Medicaid Expansion Waiver Not Yet Open for Public Comment
The federal government did not certify Indiana’s Section 1115 Medicaid Research and Demonstration waiver to expand its Healthy Indiana program as complete and open for public comment because the state did not conduct the required tribal consultation with the Potowatomi Indians. The waiver request can be seen here. We along with our partners at the…
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Wesley Prater Heads to Ohio State University
By Wesley Prater Dear Friends, As many of you know, I will be going back to graduate school this Fall. It’s been three amazing years here at Georgetown CCF. You all are undoubtedly some of the best advocates across the country and I have learned so much from working with you. It has truly been…
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New Report Finds Consumers are Receiving Improved Protections in Individual Market
By the Center on Health Insurance Reforms Staff The Affordable Care Act includes numerous consumer protections designed to remedy shortcomings in the availability, affordability, adequacy, and transparency of individual market insurance. However, because states continue to be the primary regulators of health insurance and implementers of these requirements, consumers are likely to experience some of…
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Milbank Review: Claims that Medicaid doesn’t improve health fall apart when you actually look at the research
The Milbank Memorial Fund released a telling review today of three of the studies opponents of Medicaid expansion in the remaining reluctant states often cite for the dubious premise that getting health care coverage under Medicaid is – cue ominous organ note – actually bad for a person’s health. Milbank took a calm, unbiased look at…
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Utah: Medicaid Expansion Report Presented to Legislative Health Reform Task Force
Presented to the Health Reform Task Force of the Utah legislature today the report, by Dr. Norman J. Waitzman of the University of Utah Department of Economics, gives extensive information about the people who would benefit should Utah decide to accept federal money to extend health coverage to low-income people in the state. Surprisingly, the Waitzman…
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Two Americas: Hospitals, Charity Care and Medicaid Expansion
As we move halfway through 2014, rapid changes in how health care is being delivered to our lowest income families are taking place across the country. As I noted last week multiple surveys are showing a significant drop in the rate of uninsured adults nationwide, with most of the reduction coming in states that have…
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How Cities Can Reduce the Number of Uninsured Children
By Dawn Schluckebier, National League of Cities After working with 12 cities for the last six months as they developed outreach and enrollment campaigns to increase enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, we are excited to announce that we have selected 8 cities to continue on to the third and final implementation phase of our Cities Expanding Health Access for…
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Dinah Wiley Bids Farewell to Advocacy Community
By Dinah Wiley Dear Friends and Former Colleagues, I am now setting career aside to more fully embrace other life goals. Leaving CCF has been difficult, it is a wonderful organization. I’m so grateful to Joan Alker and the funders for the chance to bring a focus on immigrant health care to CCF for the…
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What John Adams and Medicaid’s Strong Performance in Reducing Uninsured Rates Have in Common
It shouldn’t be a surprise. Reluctant states that have so far refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are consistently helping far fewer of their uninsured residents obtain health coverage compared to states that have expanded Medicaid. The latest study from the Urban Institute yesterday found the uninsurance rate for nonelderly adults dropped…
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Four New Reports Support BadgerCare Expansion
By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families The case for expanding BadgerCare coverage to all adults up to 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL) has been strengthened greatly by four new documents that were issued over the last few weeks. Although these four reports cover a wide variety of topics, and two don’t…
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Why Editorial Boards Continue to Show Strong Support for Medicaid Expansion
Today and over the holiday weekend in states that have so far refused the federal money available for expanding Medicaid, news outlets continue to editorialize in favor of expansion. In Pennsylvania, The Scranton Times-Tribune decried the decision by the Governor and legislature to go home without either passing a budget or expanding Medicaid to 300,000…
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CCF Conference Welcomes New Era of Coverage for Kids
If it seemed a little quiet on Say Ahhh! last week, we were all focused on our annual conference: “Welcoming a New Era of Coverage for Children and Families”. We had a fantastic time reconnecting with incredible health policy advocates from across the country and discussing a variety of important health policy issues. We kicked…
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Real People and a Medicaid Myth
There is a bizarre health care myth that continues to make the rounds without any basis in fact. Those opposed to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act continue to make the false claim that somehow enrolling people in health coverage under Medicaid is bad for an individual’s health and it is much better to…
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State Restrictions on Assisters May Violate Federal Law
By Justin Giovannelli, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Regulations issued last month by the Department of Health and Human Services show that laws in more than a dozen states may be invalid because they go too far in restricting the work of consumer assistance personnel certified under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The…
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Serious Enrollment Gap for Limited English Proficient Californians
If you’re like me, you’re impatiently awaiting more data so that you can understand how immigrant families—many eligible for subsidies for health insurance for the first time—faired in open enrollment. A new paper from the Greenlining Institute, identifies major gaps in enrollment for immigrant communities and some ways to close them. In addition to using…