Eligibility & Enrollment
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Putting Out the Welcome Mat for Parents by Extending Medicaid Helps Children
While most low-income children are currently eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, low-income children (those below 200 percent of the FPL) are disproportionately uninsured. One of the best state approaches for covering these remaining low-income children is to put out the welcome mat for the whole family by extending Medicaid coverage for parents and other low-income…
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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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MACPAC Testimony
Testimony by Tricia Brooks of Georgetown University Center for Children and Families before the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (November, 2013) In 1997, CHIP emerged from the ashes of the prior attempt at health reform. At the time, 5 million uninsured children were eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid, and despite the previous…
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Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum Joins CCF to Champion Children’s Coverage
By Priscilla Huang, Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum I had the opportunity to join health policy experts from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a panel discussion today hosted by New American Media, discussing encouraging findings in CCF’s latest report on the status of…
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Ready, Set to Enroll? Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment on the Cusp of 2014
By Martha Heberlein and Tricia Brooks Of late, most of the media attention on ACA implementation has focused on the technical glitches in the federal (and to a lesser extent state) marketplaces and the end of inadequate individual insurance plans, while state Medicaid agencies have been hard at work behind the scenes revamping their business…
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MACPAC Considers Future of CHIP
At its November meeting, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) focused much time on CHIP: examining the diversity among CHIP programs, considering the implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on CHIP, and exploring what the future might hold for CHIP. As a former CHIP director and someone who is still involved…
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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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Poll: Most Americans Believe the Number of Children Who Are Uninsured Has Increased in the Last Five Years
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families commissioned a national survey of 1000 adults 18 and older to measure perceptions about the state of children in America today. The survey focused on two issues that impact children: health insurance coverage and poverty. The survey was conducted September 20-22, 2013 by PerryUndem Research and Communication. The majority…
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Getting into Gear for 2014: Shifting New Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Policies into Drive
On January 1, 2014, many key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will start to go into effect, including the expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults and the launch of new Medicaid eligibility and enrollment processes, which are designed to move toward a coordinated enrollment system across health coverage programs, including Medicaid, CHIP, and…
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CHIP’S Start: Early Lessons for Health Reform
By Matt Broaddus, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Administration is expected to issue estimates this week of enrollment since October 1 in health reform’s Medicaid expansion and its new health insurance marketplaces — and some media have already reported that the numbers did not meet Administration expectations. But, as we’ve learned by examining the early experience with…
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Medicaid Enrollment is Up – as Expected
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Media reports have expressed surprise, even concern, that early enrollment in Medicaid under health reform has outpaced enrollment in the new health insurance marketplaces so far. But, that was expected to happen, even before the well-documented technical problems affecting HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace website. The fact is, the…
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And Another Thing (or two) On Inaccurate Reporting About Medicaid and the ACA …
Perhaps the most egregious error I have seen in recent reporting on Medicaid enrollment and this ACA is from a recent report in CBS News. A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that…
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Reality Check: Interest in New Coverage Options and Support for Medicaid Expansion Strong
Amidst all the noise, a new Commonwealth Fund survey provides a helpful reality check that focuses our attention back where it should be: on actual uninsured Americans and how they are approaching the new coverage options available to them. This information is super-current and comes directly from a survey of Americans and not from state…
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Strong Medicaid Enrollment So Far No Surprise to Me
I was going to write this blog earlier in the week but got waylaid by meetings, meetings and more meetings! Today I wake up and see a front-page story in the Washington Post: Medicaid Tops Private Plans in Tallies of New Sign-Ups. It’s not very often that you see a front page story on Medicaid…
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CMS Releases Guidance on Ensuring a Smooth Transition for ‘Stairstep’ Kids
By Wesley Prater As I discussed in a previous blog, Section 2001(a)(5)(B) of the Affordable Care Act aligns the minimum eligibility level for children across all age groups. Thus, some states will need to transition children from coverage in their separate CHIP programs to coverage in Medicaid on January 1, 2014. The provision is intended…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Putting Out the Welcome Mat & Encouraging Enrollment, Part II
By Dinah Wiley In Part I of this blog series, I noted that immigrants have unique concerns about signing up for health insurance, and are less likely than citizens to do so, and that blog addressed confidentiality concerns of immigrant families. The privacy concerns are paramount, yet a mixed-status family will also wonder if they…
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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…
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New Urban Paper Compares Eligibility for Assistance Across States
By Martha Heberlein Some exciting new state-by-state data from the Urban Institute gives states a better sense of how many people might be eligible for and enroll in the expanded coverage options under the ACA, finding that more than 25 million uninsured are eligible for some sort of assistance securing coverage. As expected, there’s large…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Encouraging Enrollment
By Dinah Wiley Immigrants who are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, compared to their citizen counterparts, are less likely to sign up for health coverage. Why is this so? It’s true that newcomers to the U.S. are more healthy than native-born Americans, for a few years at least. Yet when immigrants are offered private insurance…
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Medicaid.Gov Posts State Profiles, Verification Plans and MAGI Eligibility Levels
Happy open enrollment day! If you are looking for detailed information on your state’s plans for implementing the new streamlined application and ACA eligibility requirements, check out this link, then click on your state. Although some of the information is in progress for some states, it’s great to have a wealth of information in one…