Research & Reports
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Essential Health Benefits Resources List
The following is a resource list related essential health benefits.
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CCF Shares Resource List on Essential Health Benefits
By Joe Touschner If you’re a regular Say Ahhh! reader, you’ve seen a number of posts already on the ongoing process to define the essential health benefits. Most of those linked to additional supporting documents, like the Bulletin and FAQ released by HHS and the comparison of potential benchmark plans from Maine’s insurance department. And many more…
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State Budget Woes? Take a Look at Revenues, Not Medicaid
By Martha Heberlein For those regular Say Ahhh! readers, you know we have long harped on accurately depicting the role of Medicaid in state budgets. When new data are released, we update our report or write another blog to try to correct a misrepresentation that Medicaid is solely responsible for state budget woes. Today we are releasing a…
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State Budget Woes: Revenue Declines, Not Medicaid Spending, are to Blame
As states have faced large budget deficits, some politicians have laid the blame at Medicaid’s doorstep, saying that the program’s costs are growing “out of control” and that it is “crowding out” other priorities. While spending in Medicaid has grown as a result of increased enrollment due to the recession, most of this added spending…
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Why Kids’ Advocates Should Pay Attention to SHOP
By Kathleen Hamilton, The Children’s Partnership One of the first and most interesting questions posed by the California Health Benefit Exchange (HBEX) to its Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) stakeholder work group was “who is the SHOP consumer?” Early discussions clearly revealed a fundamental assumption that the “consumer” in SHOP was the employer. As…
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Taking Stock of Important Milestones as ACA Turns Two
By Kevin Lucia, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center on Health Insurance Studies When a child turns two, it’s natural to take stock of all the milestones they have achieved such as first steps, first words and first solid foods. Some parents are even organized enough to document all these achievements in a baby book. …
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ACA Protects and Improves Access to Preventive Care for Children
Medicaid and CHIP have helped millions of children access preventive care at no cost to families. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) takes this commitment further by removing cost and coverage barriers that could deter families from taking full advantage of preventive care services in private insurance plans. Since becoming law, the ACA has helped maintain…
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The New Review and Approval Process Rule for Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP Demonstration Waivers
Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP demonstration waivers are intended to allow for research and demonstration projects to test new approaches in program design and administration. The Affordable Care Act required the Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations designed to ensure that the public has meaningful opportunities to provide input into the Section…
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Medicaid Block Grants Reduce Flexibility & Less Responsive to Changing Need
House Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan, will soon release a budget that will likely include a Medicaid block grant. Meanwhile, I have been busy preparing for a debate on block grants in a class I’m taking. I found that block granting Medicaid is a risky idea because it would make the program less flexible for…
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Medicaid: Legislation, Regulation and Guidance
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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Final Exchange Rules Part 1
By Joe Touschner This week’s final exchange rule from HHS is unlikely to be the last large package of rules implementing ACA that we will see in the coming weeks–we still expect regulations on Medicaid eligibility, premium tax credits, and risk adjustment, not to mention more on the essential health benefits and other key topics…
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CMS EHB FAQ
By Joe Touschner Despite that title, our blog is not converting to the abbreviated language of texts and Twitter–I promise to type out the words in full when they’re needed. We’re also definitely not moving with Twitter speed in bringing you the news, but on February 17, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released…
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What’s the Score? CBO’s Updated Baseline Released
By Martha Heberlein I don’t know what you did yesterday, but I spent the day eagerly awaiting CBO’s annual March baseline. As the “official scorekeepers” in Washington, their projections of spending and enrollment in Medicaid, CHIP, and coverage under the exchanges carry a lot of weight. Besides, who wouldn’t love the neat little tables they produce…
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HHS Releases Final Exchange Rules
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a set of final rules on Affordable Insurance Exchanges. This set of rules generated quite a lot of interest from stakeholders as more than 24,000 comments were submitted to HHS. Some of the rules announced this week are in interim final status, meaning HHS will…
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Continuous Coverage – Critical for Chronic Conditions
By Tara Mancini Our Say Ahhh! audience is certainly aware of the benefits of implementing continuous coverage, namely, how it can improve health outcomes for beneficiaries while also decreasing administrative and utilization costs. As of January 1, 2012, 28 states offer 12-month continuous eligibility in their CHIP programs (23 in Medicaid). Alabama is one of…
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HHS Signals Approach on Actuarial Value, Cost Sharing
By Joe Touschner In a bulletin released late last week, HHS provided some indication of how it will use the key concept of actuarial value in rating health plans under the Affordable Care Act. The same bulletin shared some clues on the cost-sharing reductions that some moderate income families will receive when they enroll in exchange…
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Public Programs that Work – Good News on Children’s Coverage
By Eugene Lewit, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation Late last year, while official Washington and its pundits were busy deconstructing the failure of the “Super Committee” and the rest of us were planning our holiday celebrations, the National Center for Health Statistics quietly released its 2011 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data. Among other…
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Keeping Care Affordable: CMS Stands up for California Kids
By Michael Odeh, Children Now Earlier this month the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made an important ruling that truly embraces the “AFFORDABLE” in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Health care services and economics research over the past four decades has clearly shown that unaffordable cost-sharing in health care can be a…
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A State-by-State Look at Gains in Preventive Care Under the ACA
Since we spend a lot of time looking ahead to 2014 and the promise of significant gains in coverage, it’s always encouraging to see some immediate benefits of the Affordable Care Act. This time: preventive care for families. Last week, amidst the excitement over new Essential Health Benefit information and the Administration’s budget, some good…
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Good News for Utah’s Children: CMS Upholds Key Affordability and Benefit Protections
By Lincoln Nehring, Voices for Utah Children In 2011 Utah passed SB 180, Medicaid Reform. As with many Medicaid reform efforts happening across the country, SB 180’s broad theme was good: control costs through improved care management and quality. However, also like many Medicaid reform efforts happening around the country, Utah’s “improved quality” theme came…
