Utah
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Could 2020 bring full Medicaid expansion to Utah?
Deseret News By: Wendy Leonard Utah voters approved a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid, but Utah lawmakers said the plan was financially unsustainable and delivered a different plan, including four phases. The first two have been rejected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the grounds that the entire Affordable Care Act is…
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States that Expanded Medicaid are Helping to Protect Children from Becoming Uninsured
Our annual report on the state of children’s coverage is out. It’s a deep dive into a disturbing trend – children across the country are losing affordable health coverage, rolling back gains started with the Affordable Care Act. One main cause of this drop in coverage is easily fixed. The 14 states that haven’t expanded…
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National Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Slows but Steep Declines Continue in Problem States
In the first four months of 2019, overall child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP dropped by 122,000 children with declines in 31 states offset by gains in 20 states. As noted in previous blogs and this report, the largest declines are occurring in a handful of states. States with the Largest Percentage Decline – In…
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Utah’s Bad Medicaid Bet: Governor and Utah Legislators Relied on Trump Administration Promises that Didn’t Pan Out
What a mess. After repealing the ballot initiative passed by a majority of Utah voters that offered more affordable health coverage through a simple Medicaid expansion, Utah’s Governor and legislature substituted a law that creates a very complex Medicaid plan aimed at only people with incomes under about $12,000 a year. As it turns out,…
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Anne Dunkelberg Wins Bulldog of Year Award from Georgetown University CCF
One of the main highlights of our annual conference is the presentation of the Bulldog of the Year award. The award recognizes an individual who best embodies the spirit of the Georgetown University mascot, Jack the Bulldog, through their tenacious efforts on behalf of children and families. This year we bestowed the honor on a true…
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In Utah, Another Attempt to Limit Access to Health Care Coverage
Utah revealed the next chapter in its drawn-out Medicaid expansion debate on May 31. Unsurprisingly, it’s yet another attempt to limit access to affordable health care coverage. Rather than heeding the will of the voters and implementing Prop 3 – which would have given 150,000 low-income Utahans access to Medicaid coverage – the state has…
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New Data Show Widespread Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP Coverage in 2018
We’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of final Medicaid and CHIP enrollment data for 2018, which was expected to be posted almost a month ago. The wait is finally over but not our concerns about what’s happening. In the meantime, more stories about eligibility system issues in a handful of states and states conducting more…
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How Would Utah’s Medicaid Partial Expansion Waiver Break New Ground if Approved
Utah’s legislature recently passed a bill which rolled back the Medicaid expansion passed by the voters in November and substituted a much weaker replacement. With the Governor planning to start enrollment on April 1st into the more limited version, we expect some action by CMS on Utah’s pending Medicaid Section 1115 proposal in the next…
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Designed to Fail: Utah’s Backdoor Repeal of Voter-Approved Medicaid Expansion
In November 2018, a majority of voters in Utah passed a Medicaid expansion ballot initiative providing Medicaid health coverage to low-income parents and other adults. For example, a family of three with an annual income of less than $29,435/year would be eligible. Voters also approved a very small (0.15 percent) sales tax to pay for…
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2016 Maps
The interactive maps and data for 2016 provide information on the percent of adults and children covered by Medicaid and/or CHIP.You can embed these maps on your website by selecting a state on the left then copying the embed code on the right side of the map and pasting it into a post on your…
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Report finds number of uninsured children in Utah up more than 20 percent
Deseret News By: Ladd Egan After years of decline, the number of uninsured children across the country is up, and Utah is one of the states that saw a big jump. The number of uninsured children in the state jumped more than 20 percent last year, according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center…
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Nation’s Progress on Children’s Health Coverage Reverses Course
Introduction For the first time since comparable data was first collected in 2008, the nation’s steady progress in reducing the number of children without health insurance reversed course. The number of uninsured children under age 19 nationwide increased by an estimated 276,000 to about 3.9 million (3,925,000) in 2017, according to newly-available data from the…
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The Ground Game for Medicaid Expansion: ‘Socialism’ or a Benefit for All?
The Pew Charitable Trusts By: Michael Ollove Bills to expand eligibility for Medicaid, the health plan for the poor run jointly by the federal and state governments, have been introduced in the Nebraska legislature for six straight years. All failed. Senate opponents said the state couldn’t afford it. The federal government couldn’t be counted on…
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Events Promote Health Care for Utah’s Latino Communities
Public News Service By: Katherine Davis-Young Cities in Utah and nationwide this month are promoting health care in Latin American communities. The American health-care system is complicated and can seem even more so for people new to the country or who don’t speak English. Yehemy Zavala Orosco, preventive-health manager for Comunidades Unidas, said the Latin…
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Gehrke: Rural Utahns stand to gain the most if voters pass Prop 3 to expand Medicaid
The Salt Lake Tribune By: Robert Gehrke … For thousands of rural Utahns without health insurance, health care is out of reach or is put off until it becomes a dire threat. Thirty-one percent of adults in rural counties do not have access to insurance, whether it’s because of high unemployment, or they are self-employed,…
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Rural Utah Could See Biggest Gains Under Medicaid Expansion
Public News Serice By: Katherine Davis-Young The rate of people without health insurance in rural Utah communities is far higher than the rate in cities, but a recent report suggests that expanding Medicaid would change that. According to the report, Utah’s urban-rural uninsured gap is among the widest in the country; 31 percent of rural Utahns…
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Medicaid Waiver Wars: CMS Strikes Back
Late last month, a federal District Court ruled that the approval of the Kentucky Medicaid work requirements waiver by the Secretary of Health and Human Services was “arbitrary and capricious” because, among other things, even though the record showed that 95,000 people would lose Medicaid coverage, “the Secretary paid no attention to that deprivation.” The…
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State Medicaid and CHIP Snapshots, 2018
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) created factsheets underscoring the importance of Medicaid in providing coverage for children in all 51 states (including the District of Columbia). Sources are available here. Previous snapshots can be found here.
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No Set Federal Notice Period for CHIP – States Decide How Much Notice to Give Families Losing Coverage
According to a new brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation, at least five states (Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, and Utah) plan to end coverage for children enrolled in separate CHIP programs by January 31, 2017. One of those states (Colorado) has started to notify families that their children may lose coverage if Congress does not…
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Why Projecting When States Will Run Out of CHIP Funds is a Moving Target
This week we released a new report on the consequences of delayed Congressional action on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Federal funding for CHIP expired 27 days ago, an unprecedented lapse in CHIP’s 20-year history. Some policymakers have reasoned that the situation is not urgent because all states have some unspent funds available from…
