Research & Reports
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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…
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VA Families Can Breathe Easier as FAMIS Cuts Were Averted
By John McInerney, Health Policy Director, The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis Families in Virginia can breathe a bit easier these days, as efforts by Governor Bob McDonnell and the House of Delegates to tighten eligibility in the states’ CHIP program have failed. Virginia’s program is called Family Access to Medical Insurance Security (FAMIS), and it…
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It Happened One Night
By Donna Cohen Ross, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities All in one night — February 11 — 10,484 eligible children were enrolled into Louisiana’s Medicaid program. Are you trying to imagine this? If so, you’re probably picturing mile-long lines of children winding through Baton Rouge, parents in tow, clutching packets of forms and documents. …
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Summary of Medicaid, CHIP, and Low-Income Provisions in Health Care Reform
On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is designed (with its companion set of amendments in H.R. 4782) to provide coverage to 32 million people, adopt broad-reaching reforms in insurance industry practices, make major new investments in public health, and reduce the federal deficits. This…
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PICO’s Gordon Whitman Reflects on Historic Sunday Vote for Health Reform
(Editor’s Note: While CCF staff had their noses buried in legislative language and watched the health reform debate from the comforts of their own homes, PICO’s Gordon Whitman was out on the front lines. From what we saw on our televisions, there was a lot of commotion as protestors on both sides of the issue…
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Holding the Line on Medicaid and CHIP: Key Questions and Answers About Health Care Reform’s Maintenance-of-Effort Requirements
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requires that states maintain their current eligibility standards for Medicaid and the CHIP. These maintenance-of-eligibility (MOE) requirements apply to adults until the major components of health reform go into effect on January 1, 2014, and to children until September 30, 2019. This set of question and answers…
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Health Care Reform and Covering Sick Children
Once President Obama signed into law the health care reform bill, we all started to dig a little deeper into what the provisions mean for those in the “real world.” One issue that has risen to the top is untangling the new rules governing when insurance companies have to cover sick children. So, let’s break…
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Hoyas Lost in Providence but Georgetown’s CCF Conference was a Winner
By Ann Bacharach, Pennsylvania Health Law Project I went to Providence last week, just ahead of an historic weekend. No, I’m not talking about Rounds One and Two of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament or the upset of Georgetown by Ohio. No, I was there to attend the second of CCF’s regional meetings: Transforming Health…