Research & Reports
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Opportunity Now to Engage on Establishing a State Exchange
By Liz Arjun Last week I was at a meeting where we were joined by Joel Ario, the HHS official who is overseeing implementation of the new Health Insurance Exchanges, the vehicle that is expected to provide coverage for close to 30 million Americans in 2014. We had a chance to ask him questions and…
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Experts Opine on the Future of Medicaid
By Joe Touschner The New York Times’ “Room for Debate” feature recently addressed a topic near and dear to those of us concerned with the health of low-income children and families: the future of Medicaid. Six participants from across the ideological spectrum weighed in on how the nation should address the challenges faced by this…
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Congress Acts to Change ACA Subsidy Structure
By Joe Touschner We’re less than a year beyond the passage of the Affordable Care Act and still three full years from the implementation of state exchanges and their federal premium subsidies. But already Congress has decided to make some significant changes to how the premium tax credits would work and, in the process, could…
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New Transparency Standards Set for Mini-Meds
Yesterday, CCF’s guest blogger Aaron Smith of Young Invincibles wrote about some of the problems with so-called “mini-meds” or limited benefit plans. These are products that can’t even be called “insurance” because they provide so little protection to patients – some of them have limits on what they’ll cover as low as $2000 per year. Unfortunately, for millions…
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Young Adult’s Perspective on the Problem with Mini-Meds
Editor’s Note: Aaron Smith, co-founder of the Young Invincibles, brings a fresh perspective to the old issue of mini-med plans. He testified before a Senate Committee on this topic last week so we asked him to share his views with our readers. By Aaron Smith, co-founder of Young Invincibles There has been a great deal…
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States Can Reap Significant Savings By Implementing ACA
A new report by the Urban Institute and funded by First Focus finds that states could in fact, save significant dollars by successfully implementing health reform. This new report stands in stark contrast to other recent reports that states will bear significant costs to implement health reform. These potential cost-savings couldn’t be more welcome news…
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Health Delivery System Listening Session Coming to a Region Near You
HHS and the CMS Innovation Center want to hear from you on how to improve the health care delivery system. In the spirit of transparency and collaboration, they are hosting regional listening sessions. They kicked off the listening tour with Region Five (Chicago) on Monday and are headed to Regions Three (Philadelphia) and Ten (Seattle) later…
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GAO Finds Medicaid & CHIP Dental Care Slowly Improving
By Meg Booth and Colin Reusch, Children’s Dental Health Project It’s been almost four years since the tragedy of Deamonte Driver, a twelve-year-old Maryland boy who died due to complications of an untreated abscessed tooth. His death highlighted the worst case scenario for families struggling to find dental care. Those of you who know Children’s…
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Self Assessment Toolkit Can Help States Improve Medicaid and CHIP
There is little debate that simplifying and streamlining the application and renewal process makes it easier for both eligibility workers and families applying for coverage. But there’s nothing simple or streamlined about re-engineering the business processes and systems that are used to administer Medicaid and CHIP, so it’s easier to tread water than dive in. Despite…
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Americans Want Health Care Reform to Go Forward
(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post and Step Forward blogs) By John Bouman, President, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law Some people are spinning hard about the outcome of the recent mid-term elections. They are trying to say that the changes in Congress were a “mandate” to repeal health care reform. As usual, most of those spinners…
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Keeping Up with Affordable Care Act Implementation: Health Reform GPS and NASHP’s State Reforum
By Joe Touschner The pace of activity from federal agencies since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March has been remarkable — it seems like there is a new grant announcement, request for comment, or regulation every week. And states are just getting started — soon we’ll see exchange planning and launch, consumer…
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States Still Floating Unwise Proposals to Opt Out of Medicaid
It seems odd that such an unwise idea as opting out of Medicaid would even make it to the level of serious public debate. As long as states keep floating such irresponsible proposals, we’ll keep blogging about why it’s such a bad idea. This week, we bring you a blog post from Edwin Parks of the Center on…
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HHS Announces Medical Loss Ratio Rule
By Joe Touschner Even with all the ink, airtime, and pixels used in debating and discussing the Affordable Care Act over the last year, many of its provisions–including some very important ones–remain obscure. HHS today put forward regulations implementing one of those seemingly obscure, but actually quite vital parts of the law. The new regulations…
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HHS Issues First Guidance on Exchanges
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown Health Policy Institute Yesterday, HHS issued the first guidance on exchanges, the “first in a series of documents” they plan to publish over the next three years to give states the information they need to establish exchanges. Though the department plans to issue regulations for public comment in 2011, the goal of this…
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New Congressman Wants His Health Insurance Now – Opposes ACA
By Vincent DeMarco, President, Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund, Inc. Maryland’s Representative-Elect Andy Harris, who opposed health care for people as a state senator and a candidate for Congress, is now demanding government-subsidized health care for himself a month early. Maybe he will learn what it would be like for the millions of Americans,…
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Medicaid Managed Care – States Should Look Before They Leap (Again!)
By Joel Ferber, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and nationally recognized expert on Medicaid A recent article in USA Today focused on Medicaid managed care and its implications for health reform. Health insurance companies are clamoring for the substantial new business that will become available when Medicaid coverage is expanded to an estimated 16 million…
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NAIC Makes Progress on Model State Laws – Comments are Welcome
It’s been a busy few weeks for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), as they move forward on implementing key provisions of the ACA. A summary of the latest activity – and ways you can get involved – are summarized below. 1. Exchanges. The NAIC’s subgroup on exchanges just reported out a model state law…
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Show Me the Mandate
Health reform was not a dominant factor in influencing voters’ decisions during the mid-term elections according to the recently released Kaiser health tracking poll. That may be surprising given what we’ve been hearing about the election being a mandate for repeal of the new law but it is consistent with other polls. The Kaiser poll…
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HHS Announces Early Innovator Grants for Development of State Exchange Information Systems
Successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act relies heavily on technology to provide consumer-friendly information, to ensure that eligibility is streamlined, and to coordinate enrollment between Medicaid, CHIP and the Exchange. To support the development of these critical systems, HHS has announced “Early Innovator” grants to encourage and reward states for leading the way and…
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The District is #1!!!
By Julie Hudman, PhD, Director, Department of Health Care Finance, District of Columbia And no, it isn’t #1 in murders, infant mortality, or a high concentration of policy wonks. It is #1 in enrolling and keeping children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. A Health Affairs article by Dr, Jenny Kenney and others found that the…