Research & Reports
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Patients’ Bill of Rights Offers Important Protections for Children with Special Health Needs
Today President Obama held a press conference about a number of new regulations being issued by his Administration that he says constitute a new “Patients’ Bill of Rights”. Many of these new regulations have important ramifications for children who receive coverage through the private market and in particular, children with special health care needs. In…
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Colorado Acting Boldly on Health Reform Implementation
By Gretchen Hammer, Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved and Ashlin Spinden of Metro Area for People Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Jr. has a new health care mantra: “Because we didn’t wait for Washington, Colorado is now one of the best-positioned states in the nation to effectively implement health care reform.” Governor Ritter has made…
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What Does My Grandfather Have to Do with It? New Rules on Applying Health Reform Protections Across Health Plans
Under the health care reform law, employer health plans or those on the individual market in existence on March 23 (when the legislation was signed by President Obama) have been exempted from some, but not all, of the insurance reforms in the bill. This “grandfather” provision is a critical component of health care reform because…
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Alaska Legislature Says “Yes” to Covering More Children; Governor Says “No”
Late this spring, the Alaska legislature overwhelmingly passed an expansion of Denali KidCare (Alaska’s CHIP program), from 175% to 200% of the FPL, a policy that Governor Parnell had indicated support for earlier this year, but switched directions on last week. Currently, Alaska is one of only three states that still doesn’t cover children at…
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New Final Cost Sharing Rule Contains Notable Improvements (Hint: Save the shoeboxes for school projects)
By Jocelyn Guyer Last week, CMS issued a final rule on the premiums and cost-sharing that states can charge Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries in light of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and cost-sharing provisions relating to Native Americans included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This rule has been kicking around…
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Some Questions Answered: State-by-State Spending Estimates Under the Medicaid Expansion
By Jocelyn Guyer Yesterday the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Urban Institute released some long-awaited state-by-state estimates of the impact on adult coverage of the Medicaid expansion included in health reform, along with estimates of the state and federal cost of the expansion. The new report provides some valuable new estimates…
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Arizona Takes First Step to Restore Children’s Health Insurance
By Matt Jewett, Children’s Action Alliance of Arizona Not a lot of good news has come out of Arizona this year. Amidst leading the country in job losses, selling our state Capitol to raise money (we’re leasing it back), and a divisive immigration debate gaining national attention, we also became the first state ever to…
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Health Reform’s Maternity Coverage – Best Gift an Expectant Mother Could Receive
By Amanda Jezek, March of Dimes Health reform is giving pregnant women throughout the U.S. a far more valuable package than anything they could ever unwrap at a baby shower — access to maternity coverage. Coverage for maternity care is crucial because, without it, women face much more difficulty in obtaining needed health services. Women…
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Financing New Medicaid Coverage Under Health Reform: The Role of the Federal Government and States
Under health reform, Medicaid will be expanded to cover nearly all people under age 65 with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty line. This issue brief examines how the federal government and the states are expected to split responsibility for financing the expanded Medicaid coverage. For any given state, the share financed by…
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A Bit of Clarity on Who Gets What Matching Rate
Medicaid will continue to be a cornerstone of coverage under health reform, with an additional 16 million people joining the program. A key question that many are asking (especially state officials facing tight budgets) is how the cost of this Medicaid expansion will be financed. Let’s start with the big picture – overall, CBO estimates…
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Health Reform Web Portal Is On Its Way
By Martha Heberlein Mark your calendars – on July 1, 2010, HHS plans on launching the new health reform web portal to provide state-level information about affordable health coverage options. In anticipation of the launch, regulations were released today detailing what information the portal will include and how the data will be collected. The portal will…
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#4 BEING THE FINAL PART (REALLY) OF THE “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE ” SERIES
Where we left off: I was musing that the new CHIPRA options to do premium assistance may not prove to be all that much more attractive than the existing ones. Some states may reconfigure their programs (if they can) to qualify for the performance bonus. So far there hasn’t been a rush to pick up…
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State Commissions: A Few States Take Their First Steps Towards Implementing Reform
By Martha Heberlein While the federal government still has a great deal on its plate in terms of implementing health reform (we at CCF are eagerly awaiting every bit of guidance and regulation CMS can throw at us!), many key tasks now move to the states. Should we set up a new high-risk pool? What…
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Addressing the “What’s In It for Me” and “What’s In It for Others” Questions on Health Reform
About 55 percent of Americans say they are confused about the new health reform law and more than half say they don’t yet have enough information to understand how it will affect them personally according to Kaiser’s latest tracking poll. As was clearly evident during the health reform debate, people take their health coverage very…
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BEING THE THIRD (BUT NOT FINAL) PART OF “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE”
So in the almost final installment of my musings on premium assistance, I am going to cover two issues and then wrap up this scintillating series (I hope – this might get toooooo long and we may have to go to Part 4 which would ruin my whole LOTR analogy.). The first question is about…
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BEING THE SECOND PART OF THE “WHITHER PREMIUM ASSISTANCE”
Welcome to Part 2 of my musings about the state of premium assistance. Part 1 left us with the teaser that CHIPRA includes new premium assistance options, which the new health reform law incorporates and expands to all Medicaid beneficiaries as of January 1, 2014. So let’s take some time to explore where things stand…
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CBPP Launches Blog
Our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have joined the blogosphere and they have a lot to say. The blog was launched at 8:30 a.m. and they had already posted three entries by lunchtime. Those of you familiar with CBPP know what a bright and talented group of experts they have on…
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How Much Will This Cost Us? Key Questions to Ask About State Estimates on Health Reform Costs
By Martha Heberlein Throughout the debate on health reform, states have asked, “how much will this cost us?” Now that health reform is the law of the land, several have put out their own estimates. However, as there is no agreed upon independent arbiter to tell us what states will be spending – sadly, CBO…
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Early Wins for Children and Families in Health Care Reform
While many of the sweeping changes to insurance industry practices and other major provisions do not go into effect until January 1, 2014, there are some important early wins in health reform for children and their families. This issue brief reviews those early wins in some detail.
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Listening to the Mann: For Federal Medicaid Director, 2014 Starts Now
By David Blatt, Director, Oklahoma Policy Institute This week I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of policy analysts and advocates from 15 states on “Transforming Health Care Coverage for Children and Families,” convened by Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. The conference, which focused on the opportunities and challenges of providing coverage…