Colorado
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States Take the Lead with Policies to Protect Residents with Chronic Conditions from High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs
This blog post originally appeared on the Center on Health Insurance Reforms blog. While there were many campaign promises to lower prescription drug costs, to date there’s been little federal action to reduce prescription drug prices or lower patients’ costs. States, however, are taking the lead with policies designed to protect consumers from the high…
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Top 10 Rural Counties With Largest Share of Kids and Adults Relying on Medicaid to Meet Health Needs
Using data from our Rural Health Policy Project, we just took a look at the counties across the country that have the highest percent of children and adults relying on Medicaid for their health care. As readers of SayAhhh! know, our study found that children living in small towns and rural areas are significantly more…
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INTERACTIVE MAPS: Children Covered by Medicaid and CHIP by county, state or congressional district.
These maps show how many children are covered by Medicaid in each county and congressional district. Visit these links to view the maps, and to download handouts on your state’s coverage data: Percent of Children Covered by Medicaid/CHIP (congressional district) Percent of Children Covered by Medicaid/CHIP (county) Visit CCF’s State Resource Center for state-level data on health…
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Creating More Direct Pathways to Health Coverage in Colorado
By Stephanie Brooks, Colorado Covering Kids and Families Colorado Covering Kids and Families’ (CKF) new report, Colorado’s Health Insurance Affordability Programs: Goals to Prioritize and Options to Consider to Create a More Direct Pathway to Health Coverage, is the first in Colorado to document and examine the eligibility and enrollment process in health coverage programs…
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Beyond the Reduction in Uncompensated Care: Medicaid Expansion Is Having a Positive Impact on Safety Net Hospitals and Clinics
More than two years after the onset of expanded Medicaid coverage, significant differences are emerging between states that opted to expand Medicaid and those that did not. This report contains the findings of telephone interviews with eleven leaders of hospital systems and federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) in seven states. Three of the states where we conducted interviews…
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The Impact of Health Reform on Kids and Families in Colorado
By Gretchen Hammer, Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved The All Kids Covered Initiative in Colorado has been working together since 2006 to ensure that all children have access to adequate health coverage and high quality health care. At the time of our founding, it was estimated that 14 percent of children in Colorado were…
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Children’s Coverage on the Eve of the Affordable Care Act
Here’s a good news story on health coverage that the public is largely unaware of. The number of uninsured children continues to decline to historic lows – a remarkable accomplishment given the high childhood poverty rate and tough economic times. Yet a majority of Americans are unaware of this achievement. In a poll CCF commissioned…
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Children’s Health Coverage on the Eve of the Affordable Care Act
Georgetown University Center for Children and Families researchers analyzed health insurance data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey to get a closer look at children’s coverage trends. On the eve of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act coverage expansions, the authors found important lessons from the success the U.S. has had in covering children. The number of uninsured…
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What Can States Do to Ensure Insurers Don’t Limit Consumer Choice?
This morning, the New York Times ran a front page story headlined: “Lower Premiums to Come at Cost of Fewer Choices“. While I feel for the editors that have to explain such a complex topic in half the characters of a tweet, that headline will certainly trigger a chorus of “I told you so’s” from…
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Colorado Tells Health Stories “Public Radio StoryCorps” Style
I’m a public radio fan, having worked as the assistant general manager at New Hampshire Public Radio for five years before branching into the kids’ coverage world. And some of my very favorite public radio moments are listening to StoryCorps, a special series created by an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide Americans…
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Colorado Puts an End to CHIP Waiting Period – Let’s End the Wait for All Kids
Colorado children and families can breathe a little easier now that the Governor signed into law a commonsense bill that ends CHIP waiting periods. Colorado had required families to wait for three months from the end of their employer-sponsored insurance before enrolling their children in Child Health Plan Plus, Colorado’s CHIP program. Cody Belzley of the…
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Getting Into Gear for 2014: Findings from a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2012-2013
As 2013 begins, implementation of the major provisions of the ACA, including its coverage expansions, is less than a year away. Following the Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ACA and the 2012 elections, efforts to prepare for 2014 are moving into high gear in many states. The majority of states are capitalizing on web-based…
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23 States Receive CHIPRA Performance Bonuses for Removing Barriers and Enrolling Children in Health Coverage
Demonstrating that covering kids is still a very high priority across the nation, twenty-three states earned CHIPRA performance bonuses for improving access to children’s health coverage and successfully enrolling eligible children. The states will split a total of nearly $306 million. The 23 states include: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Montana,…
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Green Light Comes Early for Six Health Insurance Exchanges
By Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reform On Monday, December 10th, the Department of Health and Human Services granted conditional approval to six states seeking to establish state-based health insurance exchanges: Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. The decisions came earlier than the January 1, 2013, statutory deadline for HHS to…
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Uninsured Children 2009-2011: Charting the Nation’s Progress
Georgetown University Center for Children and Families researchers analyzed health insurance data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey to get a closer look at children’s coverage trends. The authors found that the nation continues to make steady progress covering children, despite no reduction in the number of children living in poverty. A strong commitment to…
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State Fact Sheets Highlight Importance of Medicaid Coverage for Children
By Ielnaz Kashefipour, American Academy of Pediatrics The American Academy of Pediatrics, in partnership with the Children’s Hospitals Association (formerly NACHRI), this week produced updated state-by-state fact sheets that explain the importance of the Medicaid program for children. These fact sheets are used in federal and state advocacy efforts to protect the Medicaid program from…
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State of the States: California and Colorado Identify EHB Benchmark
By Max Levin, Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reform On Thursday, August 30, California passed legislation establishing the Kaiser Small Group HMO 30 plan as the state’s essential health benefits benchmark plan. Beyond identifying the state’s benchmark plan, the legislation appears to include a number of important consumer protections by, for example, prohibiting plans from…
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Medicaid Coverage for Parents under the Affordable Care Act – State Fact Sheets
This issue brief presents national estimates of the number and characteristics of uninsured parents who would be eligible for Medicaid in 2014 according to whether they have child who is currently enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP coverage or an uninsured child who is eligible for Medicaid/CHIP but not enrolled. State-specific data are also provided on the ten…
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Six States Explore More Efficient Ways to Provide Family Benefits
For those of us who appreciate the opportunities and challenges states face in implementing the Affordable Care Act, it is easy to get wrapped up in making sure the expanded health coverage programs are streamlined and well coordinated. Much of the work ahead relies on having sophisticated IT systems that will revolutionize the eligibility and…
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Taking Stock of Important Milestones as ACA Turns Two
By Kevin Lucia, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center on Health Insurance Studies When a child turns two, it’s natural to take stock of all the milestones they have achieved such as first steps, first words and first solid foods. Some parents are even organized enough to document all these achievements in a baby book. …
