Eligibility & Enrollment
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The Tipping Point: New Hampshire Becomes 26th State to Expand Medicaid!
New Hampshire Governor Hassan signed bipartisan Medicaid expansion legislation into law yesterday, and my home state becomes the twenty-sixth (plus D.C.) to expand health coverage to the state’s lowest income adults. Although New Hampshire is moving toward an Arkansas-like private option, rather than delay implementation, in May the state will begin providing premium assistance to…
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Covering Former Foster Youth Should Be Easy But …
Sometimes, it’s the simplest provision of a law that works the best – like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health plan until 26. But youth leaving the foster care system as they transition to adulthood don’t have families to fall back on, so the ACA…
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NASHP Releases New Resource on Medicaid Benefits for Children
By Joe Touschner Along with ICHIA and SLMB, one of the more inscrutable acronyms in health policy is EPSDT. Even those who know it stands for Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment may not know exactly who it is for and what it entails. Worse, although it is a federal policy that applies in…
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Navigating the Application Process for Families that Include Immigrants
Immigrant resources from a webinar for assisters, February 21, 2014, sponsored by HHS in partnership with CCF, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
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Florida is Leaving 764,000 Uncovered and Giving Up $7 Million Per Day
Editor’s Note: To listen to the webinar hosted by the Florida Philanthropic Network on this topic, visit this site. I just returned from a briefing in Tallahassee sponsored by the Florida Philanthropic Network on Medicaid where I released a new factsheet. I presented some key findings – noted below – and a terrific panel…
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Florida’s Medicaid Choice: Options and Implications
In 2013, the Florida Legislature chose not to expand Medicaid to those with incomes below 133% of the federal poverty line. Consequently, Florida today is among 24 states that are not receiving federal Medicaid expansion funding. As the 2014 Legislative session nears, the question of whether to accept the federal Medicaid dollars likely will be debated again. This…
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Arkansas ‘Private Option’ Model Doesn’t Make Sense for Pennsylvania
As readers of SayAhhh! know, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania is currently revising a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver proposal to extend Medicaid coverage to the newly eligible low-income adults in his state. That would be great news if it weren’t such a problematic proposal (as I have blogged about before). The state took public comments on…
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How Do Updated 2014 Federal Poverty Level Thresholds Impact Medicaid, CHIP & Premium Tax Credit Eligibility?
By Martha Heberlein Updated 2014 federal poverty thresholds were released on January 22nd and inquiring minds have been asking what they mean in terms of determining eligibility for Medicaid, CHIP, and premium tax credits. And the answer, as with so many things in our world is, “well, it depends.” Let’s start with premium tax credits…
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Rep. Waxman’s Legacy Includes Significant Improvements in Children’s Health Coverage
Like many of you, I will truly miss Representative Henry Waxman when he retires from Congress at the end of this term. I admire his work ethic, deep concern for others and tireless efforts to stand up for those who need his help the most. Most of all, I admire his ability to get things…
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Where Does EPSDT Stand in Post-ACA Medicaid Expansion 1115 Waivers?
In the last few months, CMS has approved Medicaid expansion 1115 waiver demonstrations in Arkansas, Iowa and Michigan. Pennsylvania has a draft 1115 waiver proposal to expand Medicaid out as well. One important question that has emerged is: How will states continue to provide EPSDT and other benefits to 19 and 20 year olds who…
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Arizona Risks Falling Even Further Behind in Children’s Coverage by Rolling Back CHIP
Tomorrow, approximately 14,000 children in Arizona will lose their CHIP coverage as the state becomes the first in the nation to substantially roll back most of its CHIP program – Arizona KidsCare II. To understand what’s going on in Arizona, we first need to review the state’s checkered history with the Children’s Health Insurance Program…
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NWLC’s Report Finds Troubling Health Disparities for Low-Income Uninsured Women in States that Have’t Expanded Medicaid Coverage
States that have not yet accepted Medicaid funding to offer coverage to more uninsured adults are doing a huge disservice to women, according to a new report by the National Women’s Law Center. The report found troubling disparities between low-income women with and without health insurance and identified an urgent need to expand coverage in…
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GAO Finds Similar Reported Access to Care Among CHIP, Medicaid, and Private Coverage; Some Variation in Service Use
By Joe Touschner As part of its comparison of CHIP to private coverage, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was charged with evaluating CHIP enrollees’ access to care. At a high level, GAO’s findings confirm previous studies of access to care in public and private coverage: enrollees of both report having good access when asked if…
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GAO Releases Preliminary CHIP Check-In
By Joe Touschner A new study from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) takes an initial look at how CHIP compares to private health coverage for children. It examined benefits, costs, and access to care in CHIP and made some preliminary comparisons to health plans similar to those offered in marketplaces. GAO found that CHIP is…
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Express Lane Eligibility Has Proven Its Effectiveness – Time to Make it a Permanent Policy Option
Piloting new ways of doing things makes sense. It’s a way to test whether a concept or idea will work the way it’s envisioned, and fine-tune it based on actual experience. To this extent 13 states (AL, CO, GA, IA, LA, MD, ME, NJ, NY, OK, PA, SC, UT) have spent the past five years…
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Children’s Behavioral Health Care Use in Medicaid: Highlights from a National Analysis
By Kamala Allen and Taylor Hendricks, Center for Health Care Strategies “Eleven-year-old Angel has moved from one foster home to another since age six. His mother struggles with heroin addiction, his father is deceased, and he rarely sees his three siblings who live in separate foster homes. Angel has a hard time concentrating in school…
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Budget Deal Kicks “Medicaid Extenders” Down the Road, Adds DSH Delay
Earlier I wrote about progress in the Senate on the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) repeal, or “doc fix,” which passed the Finance committee with the Medicaid extenders intact. Since time was running out for the House and Senate to agree on the exact terms for a permanent SGR fix, the Murray-Ryan budget agreement on…
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Many Southern States Miss Opportunity to Address Health Disparities
By Tara Mancini A new report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) indicates that a little more than half (53%) of uninsured people of color have family income at or below 138% and therefore should qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as the ACA originally intended. Yet, almost a third (30%) of…
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CCF Partners with Urban Institute and Packard on New Health Reform Survey
By Martha Heberlein Today, Health Affairs released a paper detailing a new (and in our opinion a very exciting!) survey – the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) – designed by the Urban Institute. This internet-based survey is intended to provide rapid-cycle feedback on changes under the ACA. The goal is to replicate key outcome measures…
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Pennsylvania’s Medicaid Waiver Proposal Does Not Impress
Last Friday, Governor Corbett’s Administration released it’s Section 1115 waiver application draft. This initiates the process for the required 30-day state comment period that must precede the submission of the waiver request to the federal government. The state will be holding a series of public hearings and webinars with the final hearing in Harrisburg…