Florida
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Florida Senate Comes Out Swinging to Close the Coverage Gap
Last week the Florida legislature began its regular session – scheduled to end in the first week in May. As regular readers of Say Ahhh!! know, I have been expecting a more robust debate there this year due to the expiration of the Low Income Pool funding that Florida receives through its Section 1115 waiver…
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Anticipated Cuts to Uncompensated Care Funds Increase Pressure on Florida to Expand Medicaid
Today I had the pleasure of joining the League of Women Voters of Florida and Florida Legal Services on a conference call to discuss a topic of utmost importance – the decision facing Florida’s policy makers as to whether or not to expand Medicaid – especially in light of the scheduled expiration of Florida’s Low…
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Why Does Florida Still Have one of Highest Uninsured Rates for Kids? What Can be Done to Help?
Earlier this week I released a brief and held a webinar with the Florida Philanthropic Network on Florida’s uninsured children. The brief provides an overview of the demographics of Florida’s kids and outlines some policy decisions that will impact Florida’s high uninsured rate in the future. It will come as no surprise to regular Say Ahhh!…
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Open Enrollment 2: Experts Answer Tough Questions and Offer Advice to Help Navigators and Consumer Assisters
This week, Georgetown University experts from the Center on Health Insurance Reforms and the Center for Children and Families released a report from their ongoing project to support Navigators and consumer assisters. The project, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides Navigators and other in-person assisters in six states – Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan,…
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Spread the Word: Deadline One Week Away for Immigrant Communities Needing to Verify Marketplace Eligibility
Immigrant communities face a critical deadline on Friday, September 5: submit additional documentation to verify their citizenship or immigration status, or potentially lose health coverage through the marketplace at the end of September. Yesterday we helped sponsor a press briefing primarily for ethnic media to help spread the word and educate immigrant communities about the…
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State Reporting on Child Health Quality Measures Improves Considerably
The 2009 CHIP Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) introduced a number of useful tools and incentives to advance and improve children’s health coverage including the development of a standardized set of children’s health quality measures. Last fall, while we were all engrossed in the rollout of the health insurance marketplaces, HHS released the 2013 Annual Report on…
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Infographic: Southerners More Likely to be Poor, Uninsured and Live in a State that Denies Them Medicaid
A new infographic from the Kaiser Family Foundation this week lays out some of the ironies of the decision by many southern states not to accept federal money to expand Medicaid health coverage to their lowest-income citizens. With higher rates of poverty and adults more likely to be uninsured, the need for affordable coverage is…
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Florida Legislature Adjourns with Unfinished Medicaid Business: Federal Hospital Funding to Run Out in 2015 Putting the Pressure on For Next Year
The Florida legislature adjourned for 2014 without accepting the federal Medicaid funding on the table to extend coverage to as many as a million Floridians who would have been eligible. According to the state’s Social Services Estimating Conference, for the current fiscal year (which will end on June 30, the state could have received $1,258,054,808…
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CMS Helps Florida Out with Short-Term Fix – Florida Should Accept Medicaid Option for Long-Term Solution
By Greg Mellowe, Florida CHAIN The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced its approval of a three-year extension of Florida’s Statewide Medicaid Managed Care program, but only a one-year extension of the Low Income Pool (LIP). The LIP provides the state with additional federal Medicaid funding that hospitals can use to…
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Florida’s Obamacare Alternative: After Six Years is This the Best They CanDo?
An insurance exchange opened last month in Florida, and it’s called “Florida Health Choices,” but it doesn’t offer consumers or small businesses actual health insurance. Instead, the only products consumers can buy on the site are called “supplemental” insurance products, designed to supplement, but not replace, traditional health insurance. These products don’t meet any of…
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Florida is Leaving 764,000 Uncovered and Giving Up $7 Million Per Day
Editor’s Note: To listen to the webinar hosted by the Florida Philanthropic Network on this topic, visit this site. I just returned from a briefing in Tallahassee sponsored by the Florida Philanthropic Network on Medicaid where I released a new factsheet. I presented some key findings – noted below – and a terrific panel…
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Florida’s Medicaid Choice: Options and Implications
In 2013, the Florida Legislature chose not to expand Medicaid to those with incomes below 133% of the federal poverty line. Consequently, Florida today is among 24 states that are not receiving federal Medicaid expansion funding. As the 2014 Legislative session nears, the question of whether to accept the federal Medicaid dollars likely will be debated again. This…
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Unreasonable Standards Will Likely Discourage Hospitals from Doing Presumptive Eligibility
I’ve written several Say Ahhh! blogs on the Affordable Care Act’s new hospital presumptive eligibility provisions. The ACA explicitly gives hospitals the prerogative to make Medicaid presumptive eligibility (PE) decisions, regardless of whether the state has previously implemented the policy option. In particular, presumptive eligibility provides a great opportunity for hospitals to connect uninsured kids…
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Many Southern States Miss Opportunity to Address Health Disparities
By Tara Mancini A new report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) indicates that a little more than half (53%) of uninsured people of color have family income at or below 138% and therefore should qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as the ACA originally intended. Yet, almost a third (30%) of…
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Health Policy Institute Releases New Report on Florida’s Medicaid Long-Term Care Program
By Laura Summer, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Florida’s new Medicaid Managed Long-Term Care program is in place in six regions of the state and will be fully operational statewide by March 1, 2014. Planning for this new program has been in the works for several years. In 2011, the Florida legislature established the two-part…
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CMS Releases First Monthly Report on Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment
Just over 1.46 million persons were determined eligible for new Medicaid or CHIP coverage in October – that is an 8.6% increase from the average of the three months prior. The vast majority is Medicaid eligible (1,344,661) with 115,706 new CHIP eligibles – almost evenly divided between states that are expanding Medicaid and those that…
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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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Medicaid Managed Care in Florida: Federal Waiver Approval and Implementation
Florida’s new Medicaid plan– called the Managed Medical Assistance program –will move nearly all of the state’s Medicaid beneficiaries into managed-care plans. This new plan, approved in June 2013, is the final chapter in a Medicaid reform effort that is almost a decade old. Drawing on experiences from that decade of experimentation, the new plan…
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Kaiser Report Finds More Than 5 Million Will Fall Into Coverage Gap Created by States Failing to Expand Medicaid
A federally-funded Medicaid option for more uninsured adults is an important cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, however, an estimated 5,161,820 uninsured individuals will be left behind because they live in states that have not yet accepted the Medicaid expansion option. Those who fall into the gap earn too much to qualify under their state’s…