Research & Reports
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RIte Care and Rhode Island’s Family Resource Counselor Program Highlighted as National Models
By Elizabeth Burke Bryant, Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Rhode Island was proud to be one of three states highlighted in a video at Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge event on September 3, 2010. Rhode Island’s successful RIte Care health insurance program and our Family Resource Counselor program were both featured as models…
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Many Patient’s Bill of Rights Provisions Go Into Effect on September 23rd
September 23rd will mark the six-month milestone for the Affordable Care Act and several provisions impacting children and families will go into effect on that date including provisions in the “Patient’s Bill of Rights” which: Prohibit employer or new individual health plans from excluding coverage of specific benefits associated with a pre-existing condition for any…
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CK2C Event Inspires Action in States
By Ann Bacharach, Pennsylvania Law Project and National Covering Kids and Families Network I took a break from my stay-cation this week to get motivated for the fall. On behalf of the National Covering Kids and Families Network, I took the early morning train from Philadelphia to Washington on Friday to attend the re-launch of…
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Since You’ve Been Gone …
Having spent much of the summer in South America and without much access to American media, I was curious to see how things had changed when I returned to work this week. Hmmm. Not so good. Controversy over the health reform bill seems as rhetoric laden and inflammatory as ever as the election approaches. That…
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California is Blazing a Trail on Establishing Health Insurance Exchange Under ACA
By Mike Odeh (Children Now) and Kristen Golden Testa (The Children’s Partnership) with the 100% Campaign And we’re off! Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is officially underway! Less than six months after Congress passed the ACA, California has blazed the trail as the first state in the nation to create a statewide Health Insurance…
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Health Insurance Exchanges: New Coverage Options for Children and Families
A key feature of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is state-based “exchanges.” These new health insurance marketplaces are designed to provide uninsured (and in some cases underinsured) individuals and small businesses with the ability to purchase affordable health insurance coverage for themselves and their employees respectively. States that establish and operate exchanges…
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Group of State Medicaid Directors Creates New Association
By Jocelyn Guyer After two weeks in New Hampshire and Maine and a few extra cups of coffee to get moving, I returned from vacation yesterday to find this very interesting development in my inbox – the nation’s Medicaid directors are breaking away from the American Public Human Services Association to start their own independent…
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CMS Releases Guidance on the Extension of Enhanced FMAP Funding
By Martha Heberlein On August 10th, President Obama signed an extension of the state fiscal relief first authorized under ARRA. Under the extension, states will continue to receive a phased-out increase in their federal Medicaid matching rate through June of 2011, as opposed to it expiring at the end of this year. CMS released guidance…
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Three Cheers for Dependent Coverage Expansion!
By Patrick Tigue, New England Alliance for Children’s Health While there are many provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will benefit children and families, the expansion of dependent coverage to children up to age 26 is among the most important – especially in the short-term. In 2011 alone, as many as 1.64 million…
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Location Matters
By Martha Heberlein I know I’ve said it dozens of times – states are different. Like people themselves, they have their own characteristics, quirks, and personalities that make them unique. But what about within states – are there differences of note? Why, of course (I’m sure we can all think of a long list of…
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Getting Kids Covered and in the Game
Last week, Cindy Mann blogged about the importance of kids’ coverage on healthcare.gov. “As back-to-school time approaches, families are thinking about making sure their children have every opportunity to learn. Now is also the time to make sure that kids have the coverage they need to be healthy – the first step to a successful…
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Extension of Medicaid Relief Clears Last Hurdle in Congress
By Joe Touschner We’ve been following for some time the inconsistent progress of legislation that would extend increased federal Medicaid payments to states. While versions of the legislation have previously passed both houses of Congress, the two chambers had not succeeded in making the extension law by agreeing to the same bill. Today, they have,…
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Explaining Health Reform: Benefits and Cost-Sharing for Adult Medicaid Beneficiaries
By Jocelyn Guyer Under health reform, Medicaid eligibility will be expanded to reach nearly everyone under age 65 with income below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. As a result, millions of uninsured adults, including many with very low income and significant health needs, will become eligible for the program. This brief provides details…
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Get Covered: Get In the Game Initiative is a Great Idea
By Suzanne Schlattman, Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative Education Fund, Inc. This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the Get Covered. Get in the Game initiative which will be launched in seven pilot states across the country including: Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Ohio and Wisconsin. The initiative brings together coaches, schools, and communities to educate families with children…
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Home Visiting Program – Another Early Win for Children in Affordable Care Act
By Tom Birch, National Child Abuse Coalition For the first time, with the passage of health care reform in March, federal funding will be available to states to support a range of voluntary home visitation services to pregnant women, young parents and their children, designed to improve maternal and child health, foster healthy child development,…
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FPL Guidelines Remain Unchanged for 2010
By Martha Heberlein For all those wondering what was going on with the 2010 federal poverty level, your answer arrived today in the Federal Register. But while I have your attention, here’s the back-story. A decline in the average CPI-U during 2009 would have required HHS to issue poverty guidelines in 2010 that were actually…
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Medicaid and Medicare Turn 45 Today
Is this a scene from the latest Mad Men episode? While it’s from the same era, it’s fairly apparent from the attire that the photo was not taken on Madison Avenue. The photo was taken 45 years ago today at the signing ceremony of the Social Security Act of 1965, the law that created…
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$51 Million Available for Designing State Exchanges
By Martha Heberlein HHS announced today that up to $1 million per state will be available in grants to begin establishing health insurance exchanges. This first round of grants is designed to help cash-strapped states conduct the research and planning necessary to build the new marketplaces. Grant applications are available at: http://www.healthcare.gov/center/grants and are due…
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Consumer Assistance: A Guided Tour to Your New Health Care Choices
By Christine Barber, Community Catalyst We’ve all heard the recently-passed Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides a lot of new opportunities for improving health care coverage and access – but we also hear most Americans don’t understand what the law actually means for them. At Community Catalyst, we think a major opportunity created by national health…
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Bumps in the Road for Kids’ Coverage
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown Health Policy Institute In the last couple of weeks there have been reports that some insurance companies have decided they will no longer market “kids-only” policies, in response to the new requirement under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that they issue coverage to all children, even those with pre-existing…