North Carolina
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Fulfilling the Promise of 2014: Aligning and Simplifying Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment for Children and Parents
Simplification and alignment of policies for children in Medicaid and CHIP have helped states fill the gap in private insurance and achieve record levels of coverage for 90% of our nation’s children. These lessons are carried forward in the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage through Medicaid and the Exchanges. The ACA envision a customer-friendly,…
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CMS Continues to Invest in and Support Innovation and State Flexibility in Medicaid
Regardless of who pays for health care services, the U.S. health care system is in desperate need of dramatic change to make it the best it can be – affordable, sustainable and focused on outcomes – without leaving millions of Americans, mostly low-income or those with existing health conditions, uninsured. The good news is that…
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Medicaid and State Budgets: Looking at the Facts
Medicaid continues to make up a large share of state budgets, but its role is far more nuanced than is frequently portrayed. This series of fact sheets is designed to provide a short overview of the role of Medicaid in state budgets, the sources of spending, and details on how much each state spends. The…
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Eliminating Medicaid and CHIP Stability Provisions (MoE): What’s at Stake for Children and Families
The stability in Medicaid and CHIP can be directly attributed to the short-term fiscal relief and the federal requirements that states maintain their eligibility rules and enrollment procedures until broader health reform is implemented. If the stability provisions are rescinded, states could eliminate Medicaid for anyone who is covered at state option, as well as…
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Holding Steady, Looking Ahead: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility Rules, Enrollment and Renewal Procedures, and Cost Sharing Practices in Medicaid and CHIP, 2010-2011
Over the past year, as the nation’s attention was focused on the country’s economic problems and the debate over the passage of broader health care reform, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) continued to play their vital role of providing coverage to millions of people who otherwise lack affordable coverage options. In 2010,…
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Medicaid Managed Care – States Should Look Before They Leap (Again!)
By Joel Ferber, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and nationally recognized expert on Medicaid A recent article in USA Today focused on Medicaid managed care and its implications for health reform. Health insurance companies are clamoring for the substantial new business that will become available when Medicaid coverage is expanded to an estimated 16 million…
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No More Annual Limits? Not so Fast
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown Health Policy Institute One of the great new patient protections in the ACA is the ban on lifetime and annual limits. The law, as readers of this blog know, prohibits all plans from imposing lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits and, in 2014, prohibits annual limits on the dollar value of…
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Build Upon Medicaid Successes in Health Reform
This past weekend some Governors attending their national association’s meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi expressed concern over the future role of Medicaid in health reform. In particular, Tennessee Governor Bredesen, a former healthcare executive, stated that “it’s not health care reform to dump more money into Medicaid.” But indeed, investing more money in Medicaid by paying…
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North Carolina Community Care Saves $ and Improves Access – Isn’t That the Kind of Health Reform We All Need?
Amidst all the talk this week in Washington about reforming our nation’ s health care system, a new report highlighting a great model for reform went largely unnoticed. North Carolina’s Medicaid initiative “Community Care” has made great progress in providing better access to care and saving money to boot!! Yet one of the options the…
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The Last Piece of the Puzzle
By Jocelyn Guyer The nation has made significant progress in covering children, but nine million children still lack insurance and many more are at risk of not receiving the health care services that they need to develop and grow properly. To address these issues, children will need to be an integral part of the much…
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Obama Health Team Takes Road Show to North Carolina
Adam Searing, North Carolina Justice Center’s Health Access Coalition The Obama Administration is holding a series of Regional White House Forums to continue discussions about bringing down health care costs and expanding coverage for all Americans. We asked Adam Searing of North Carolina Justice Center’s Health Access Coalition to post a guest blog from the event in Greensboro.…
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Weathering the Storm: States Move Forward on Child and Family Health Coverage Despite Tough Economic Climate
This report provides a first look at state activity after the passage of CHIPRA and the availability of increased Medicaid funding in the economic stimulus package. It finds that despite unprecedented fiscal challenges, all but a few states held steady on children’s health coverage, and twenty-three states took steps to move forward. This progress on…
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North Carolina Eligibility Expansion
Summary On July 31, 2007, Governor Mike Easley signed into law NC Kids’ Care. NC Kids’ Care is a new publicly subsidized insurance program for children in families earning 201 percent to 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). Currently, North Carolina provides Medicaid and Health Choice (its SCHIP program) to children with family…
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Out of Touch: A Status Report on CMS’s August 17th Directive
By Jocelyn Guyer On August 17, 2007, CMS sent a letter, known as the August 17th directive, to state health officials sharply restricting the ability of states to cover uninsured children using SCHIP funds. New data and analyses from state officials, research organizations, and policy experts raise significant questions about the basis for and the…
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Children’s Health Coverage: States Moving Forward
This report provides results from a nationwide review of state efforts to provide health care coverage to uninsured children between January 2006 and mid-April 2007. It shows that a large number of states throughout the country have proposed, passed, or implemented initiatives to cover more children through three primary strategies: finding, enrolling, and keeping SCHIP-…
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Closing the Coverage Gap: Trends in Health Insurance Coverage for Children
From 1996-97 to 2003-04, the uninsured rate of low-income children was reduced by a third; however, the national data mask significant variation across the states in how children are faring. To provide a state-specific perspective on the issue, this brief examines health insurance trends for children in all 50 states and the District of Columbia…