Research & Reports
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No More Annual Limits? Not so Fast
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown Health Policy Institute One of the great new patient protections in the ACA is the ban on lifetime and annual limits. The law, as readers of this blog know, prohibits all plans from imposing lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits and, in 2014, prohibits annual limits on the dollar value of…
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A Medicaid Trend Nobody’s Talking About
By Martha Heberlein There are some pretty persistent rumors floating around out there regarding state budgets and the growth in Medicaid spending. The optimist in me wants to view these rumors as mere “misunderstandings,” an ill-informed look at the data, and not political posturing meant to frame a highly successful program in a negative light.…
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Eight Difficult Exchange Questions Addressed in New Report
Last week, the Commonwealth Fund released a new report by Timothy Jost on the state-based health insurance exchanges. The author analyzes eight of the most difficult issues that the states and federal government face in implementing the exchanges, and offers recommendations for addressing them. Read the blog or the report to get answers to these…
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A Champion Fills a Critical Role at CMS
By Shelby Gonzales Center on Budget and Policy Priorities In 2008, Linda Nablo was recognized as a Child Health Champion for her relentless work to improve children’s health coverage programs in Virginia. Having known Linda for many years, I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving of this honor. As you can imagine, I was quite thrilled to…
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Kansas Tackles Backlog with Commonsense Solutions to Improve Efficiency
By Suzanne Wikle of Kansas Action for Children At a time when I can pay my bills using an Iphone or Blackbery, it seems a no-brainer that states should be pursuing more technological fixes to simplify and streamline processes to ensuring that families are able to access health insurance through Healthwave, Kansas’ Medicaid and Children’s Health…
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MomsRising Receives Overwhelming Response to Invitation to Share Thoughts on ACA
In honor of the six-month anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, our friends at MomsRising invited moms, dads, grandparents, bloggers, community leaders, government officials, policy experts and others to share their thoughts and feelings about health reform. They received an overwhelming response to their invitation. Here are a few of the many interesting blog entries: Kerri Marrone…
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ACA September 23rd Reforms Will Make Insurance Work Better for Children and Families
Today marks the six-month anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is also the date that some of the new law’s insurance reforms go into effect to help make insurance work better for families and children. Those improvements include: Prohibiting most insurers from limiting benefits or denying coverage…
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Choosing Your Own Doctor – New Protections for Children and Adults
By Joe Touschner Finding the right health care professional to provide primary care can be a challenge–we’re all looking for the right balance of expertise, compassion, communication skills, and availability. So no one likes it when an insurance company steps in to limit our choice when it comes to picking an available primary care provider. …
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Kaiser Video Explains Affordable Care Act
Six months after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law, most people still don’t know what’s in it, according to a recent Associated Press Poll. For those of you feeling frustrated by the fact that the public still doesn’t seem to understand the new law despite your best efforts, take heart in…
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September 23 Health Care Reforms: Making Insurance Work for Children and Families
September 23rd marks the six-month anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It also ushers in a new set of insurance reforms that will enable more children and families to obtain and keep their health care coverage. This brief describes the changes as well as a number of strategies…
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Rising to the Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge
By Cathy Kaufman, Oregon Healthy Kids It was a proud day for Oregon last month when our Healthy Kids Program was hailed as a national model by U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Secretary Sebelius paid a visit to Cleveland High School in Portland to help launch a new Healthy Kids Sports Campaign,…
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Census Paints Bleak Portrait of Poverty & Lack of Insurance
The portrait revealed by the data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau was bleak, underscoring the extraordinary toll the nation’s economic downturn took on families in 2009. A record number of people are now living in poverty and the nation’s uninsurance rate is at the highest level since the Census started tracking it in…
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Big Stakes for Health Reform in Tomorrow’s Senate Vote
By Edwin Parks, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Senate will vote tomorrow on an amendment to small business legislation that would seriously weaken an essential element of the new health reform law — the requirement that individuals obtain health insurance or pay a penalty — and eliminate preventive care funding aimed at reducing…
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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…