Eligibility & Enrollment
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Delaying Care: Treatment Effects of High Cost Sharing
By Keanan Lane A recent study appearing in JAMA provides further insight into the effects of cost sharing on patients with chronic illnesses, finding that higher amounts resulted in greater delays of necessary treatments. Parents were surveyed about financial pressure they felt in treating their children’s asthma and whether, in the presence of financial pressure,…
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CHIP Financing Basics #1 – Federal CHIP Funding Structure
As we at CCF begin to dig into the future of CHIP—which stands to go away if funds are not renewed before next September—we thought it would make sense to refresh Say Ahhh! readers (and ourselves!) about how the financing works so we can more thoughtfully contemplate what happens if Congress does or does not…
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Protecting Medicaid Kids at Renewal
By Martha Heberlein As my colleague, Tricia Brooks, noted a few weeks ago, MAGI-based renewals are upon us in many states (save those that have delayed them, which we talked more about in a separate blog). And buried within the ACA is a little-known provision that specifically protects children who were enrolled in Medicaid (but…
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Health Coverage for Immigrant Children and Families? Two New Studies Support Moving Forward
Two new studies published in Health Affairs support state efforts to expand coverage for immigrant children and families. Coverage for immigrant kids and pregnant women In 2009, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act provided a new opportunity for states to receive federal funding to cover lawfully present low-income kids and pregnant women in Medicaid…
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Delaying Renewals – Still an Option for States
By Martha Heberlein An option provided by CMS to states to delay renewals so that they wouldn’t be running eligibility the old and new way, has a second purpose as states face processing back logs and fixing systems glitches. Taking a step back – the ACA requires that existing beneficiaries be protected against losing coverage…
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Crossing Into New Territory with 25,000 Newly Covered Kids
By Anna Strong, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families At Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, we’ve been working for many years to ensure that all children have health coverage here in our state. Our latest report, Crossing into New Territory: Kids’ Health Coverage in 2014, outlines the progress Arkansas has made in covering kids since…
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What Would Happen if CHIP Went Away? Our Research Suggests Kids (for now) Would be Significantly Worse Off
While the eyes of the world have been intently focused on the success or failure of the Affordable Care Act, an important question has recently surfaced in the policy debate by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment Access Commission (MACPAC, — the group legislatively tasked with making recommendations on Medicaid and CHIP to policymakers): Should the Children’s…
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Without CHIP, Low-Income Arizona Families Face High Costs for Children’s Health Coverage
Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law, Arizona began the process of dismantling its CHIP program when it froze enrollment in KidsCare in January 2010. Enrollment was temporarily reinstated in May 2012, extending coverage to 47,000 children at the peak of KidsCare II. Thanks to the ACA’s alignment of children’s Medicaid eligibility across all…
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CCF-NASHP Report Details CHIP Benefits and Cost Sharing and Considers ACA Context
By Joe Touschner (CCF) and Joanne Jee (NASHP) We know CHIP gives millions of children access to affordable health coverage, but what exactly does it cover? Because of the flexibility built into the CHIP law, the answer varies by state—states can choose both the benefits and the cost sharing in their separate CHIP programs, as…
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Experience of Ohio Family Depicts Plight of the “Loopers”
Remember the Medicaid loopers? These were the folks who applied for coverage through the health insurance Marketplace only to be told they – or a family member – were not eligible because the Marketplace assessed them as eligible for Medicaid coverage. In some cases, parents did not learn that their child was not on their Marketplace…
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ACA Promises Streamlined Medicaid/CHIP Renewals, After the First Round
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) envisions highly automated renewals for Medicaid and CHIP. With new eligibility systems capable of retrieving personal eligibility-related data from trusted sources, such as the state’s wage database, agencies should be able to renew coverage for most enrollees without requiring them to complete forms or submit paperwork. But first, state agencies…
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Are States Using Their Extra Medicaid Federal Match to Boost Eligibility Capacity?
Recent media attention highlighting significant backlogs of Medicaid applications waiting for eligibility determinations at the state level reminded me of what I reported in this blog last April: as of October 1, 2013, states can receive a 75% federal match for ongoing operational costs associated with their new eligibility systems, including personnel. So I’m wondering…
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For DACA Grantees, Health Insurance is (Only) a Dream
By Dinah Wiley [Update: In August 2022, the Biden administration codified the DACA program in regulation. The regulation did not change health insurance for DACA grantees. For current information on DACA, visit the National Immigration Law Center.] We receive a lot of questions about the health insurance eligibility of non-citizens with a special Deferred Action status…
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Medicaid Provides Needed Access to Care
Medicaid and CHIP significantly improve access to needed health care for the populations they cover. As of June 2011, Medicaid covered 25 million adults and over 32 million children (along with its smaller companion program, CHIP). The fact sheet indicates Medicaid enrollees have comparable access to care as those with private coverage and much better access and fewer…
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Study Examines Access to Primary Care for New Patients
By Martha Heberlein Much of the focus over the last six months has been on connecting folks to coverage. But once that’s been accomplished, the next question that often (rightfully) pops into people’s minds is whether or not these newly-insured consumers will be able to access care. Scores of studies over the years have consistently…
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Health Affairs Study Finds Adults in Income Range of ACA Medicaid Expansion are Healthier than Pre-ACA Enrollees
By Tara Mancini New research that appears in a Health Affairs “Web First” article finds that adults (ages 19-64) who are newly eligible for Medicaid under the ACA, and those who were previously eligible but not enrolled had similar or better health than pre-ACA enrollees. This is true for those in the income range that qualifies…
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CMS Reports Medicaid Enrollment Gains of 3 Million (and counting)
After hearing that more than 7 million people were enrolled through the marketplaces before the close of open enrollment on March 31st, we’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of companion Medicaid and CHIP enrollment data. The wait is over! CMS has released monthly eligibility and enrollment activity data since October 2013, but the hot-off-the-press February…
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Two States On the Path to the Basic Health Program
Both Minnesota and New York are on the path to setting up a Basic Health Program (BHP) that will provide more affordable coverage for low-income families than they may find on the marketplace. Minnesota passed BHP legislation that was signed into law in May 2013. In New York, BHP was included in the Governor’s budget…
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Two Takeaways from New Hampshire and Michigan Medicaid Expansions
By Jesse Cross-Call, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities New Hampshire’s legislature has passed and Governor Maggie Hassan has signed into law legislation that will expand Medicaid as part of health reform effective July 1. This means that combined with Michigan, where expansion takes effect tomorrow, an additional 600,000 uninsured people will be newly eligible for…
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New Report Finds When Parents Were Cut from MaineCare, Kids Lost Coverage Too
It is a well-documented fact that connecting parents with coverage has a positive impact on children and now Maine Children’s Alliance has released a report that shows how disconnecting parents from coverage negatively impacts children. About 28,500 working Maine parents lost coverage after the state scaled back coverage in 2012. Prior to 2012, Maine offered…