Oregon
-
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…
-
If You Build It Will They Come? Outreach Lessons from CHIP
Editor’s Note: This blog post originally appeared on the State Refor(um) By Carla Plaza, National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) If you build it will they come? If history repeats itself, they will, but not without intentional, focused efforts to reach, assist and enroll individuals and families into health care coverage. Prior to the…
-
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…
-
New Issue Brief Focuses on State Action to Promote Child-Only Coverage
Editor’s Note: This blog originally appeared in the CHIRblog, a blog focused on health insurance coverage, insurance markets, and how people are affected by insurance reform. By Katie Keith, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Today, the Commonwealth Fund released a new issue brief on the availability of child-only policies. The issue brief is part of an ongoing series by CHIR on…
-
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…
-
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…
-
ACA Protects and Improves Access to Preventive Care for Children
Medicaid and CHIP have helped millions of children access preventive care at no cost to families. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) takes this commitment further by removing cost and coverage barriers that could deter families from taking full advantage of preventive care services in private insurance plans. Since becoming law, the ACA has helped maintain…
-
Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2011-2012
Amid ongoing state budget pressures, a requirement in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that states maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP was central in preserving coverage during 2011. In addition, more than half of states (29) made improvements in their programs. Most of these improvements involved greater use of technology to boost program efficiency and…
-
Secrets to Success: An Analysis of Four States at the Forefront of the Nation’s Gains in Children’s Health Coverage
The uninsured rate for children dropped to 8% in 2010, the lowest point ever achieved since the federal government began tracking this statistic in 1987. The following issue-brief attempts to gain an increased understanding of factors contributing to the success in coverage of children by conducting site visits and interviews with key stakeholders in four…
-
Paying Pharmacies Honest Prices for Prescription Drugs
As policymakers across the country look to balance their budgets, some are turning to Medicaid, recycling the same harmful policies they’ve used year-after-year: eliminating coverage for vulnerable Americans, restricting critical benefits like prescription drug coverage, imposing premiums on those who can’t afford them, and slashing already-low provider reimbursement rates. Community Catalyst and Georgetown University Health…
-
Despite Economic Challenges, Progress Continues: Children’s Health Insurance Coverage in the United States from 2008-2010
In this paper, health insurance data from the Census Bureau’s annual “American Community Survey” was analyzed in order to get a more accurate depiction of children’s coverage. Even though the number of children living in poverty has increased almost 19 percent over a three-year period, the number of children without health insurance declined 14 percent–…
-
Outreach Push Continues to Cover Eligible Children in Medicaid and CHIP
In one of those competitions where you wish all the teams could win, CMS was limited to choosing the best of the best in a second round of $40 million in grants for Medicaid and CHIP outreach, enrollment and retention activities. In announcing the grants, friends at CMS pointed to the olympic success in Oregon as strong…
-
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,…
-
Some Good News in a Tough Year: Oregon’s Child Un-Insurance Rate Cut in Half
By Robin Christian, Children First for Oregon In this time of economic uncertainty and political division, last week brought us some welcome good news in Oregon. According to the Oregon Health Authority, the number of uninsured children has dropped dramatically in less than two years – from 11.3% to 5.6% – thanks to the affordable,…
-
Exchange Implementation Work Underway Across the Country
By Joe Touschner Don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper — while the national media has reported that states are moving “gingerly” to implement the Affordable Care Act, in fact there’s been a great deal of activity of late, especially around exchanges. No fewer than 16 state legislatures have acted favorably on measures that…
-
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…
-
Early Wins for Children on the One-Year Anniversary of Health Reform: Family Perspectives
March 23, 2011 marked the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). There have been early wins for children and their families, even though many of the major provisions do not go into effect until January 2014. This issue brief highlights families from across the country whose children have personally been…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Early Innovators Awarded HHS Health Exchange IT Grants
Drumroll, please! For us techies (or techie-wanna-bes), the waiting is over. And the envelope says…Kansas, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma*, Oregon, Wisconsin and a multi-state consortia consisting of the New England states (sans New Hampshire) are the winners. The awards ranged from a low of $6.3 million for Maryland to a high of $54.6 million for…