Research & Reports
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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…
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Insurance Commissioners Meet on Exchanges: Medicaid and CHIP
Last week, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners held a first of many planned meetings on health care reform. In many ways, state insurance commissioners, have become the front lines of health reform implementation as they are responsible for ensuring that health plans are compliant with the insurance reforms in the Affordable Care Act and they…
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Wisconsin Shows How States Can Mitigate the Downside of New Puerto Rico Law
By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families It isn’t often that state policymakers have to make program changes and policy choices because of a law passed in another state or territory of the U.S. Thus, it came as a big surprise to learn that a law enacted in Puerto Rico forces states to…
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Advocates Can Guide and Support Efforts to Advance Children’s Coverage: Reports Show How
By Eugene Lewit and Liane Wong The David and Lucile Packard Foundation The percent of uninsured children has consistently declined, despite deterioration of coverage for adults and the economy. This is one of the significant but frequently overlooked good news stories of recent years. The gains in children’s coverage have been due in large part to…
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CCF Comments to NAIC on Exchange Coordination with Medicaid and CHIP
CCF Comments to NAIC on Exchange Coordination with Medicaid and CHIP
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States will Face Tough Choices Without Extended Medicaid Funding
By Joe Touschner As we’ve noted previously Congress has yet to reach agreement on extending the increased Medicaid funding it originally granted in the 2009 economic recovery legislation. The increased payments are scheduled to end in December 2010, but most state budgets are looking no better than they were a year and a half ago. …
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What will this cost us – continued…
By Martha Heberlein Since the last time we talked about state estimates of the cost of health reform, several more have put them out. A few, in particular, struck me – Maine, Maryland, and Wisconsin. Why, you might ask? Because these three states found that health reform would save them money. John Holahan of the Urban…
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HHS Rule on Preventive Services: Bright Futures For All Children
By Judith S. Palfrey, MD, FAAP President, American Academy of Pediatrics On Wednesday, I was honored to attend an event in DC unveiling the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Interim Final Rule on preventive services under health reform. To so many of us in the business of taking care of children, the…