Eligibility & Enrollment
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Medicaid and CHIP Eligibility, Enrollment, and Cost Sharing Policies as of January 2021: Findings from a 50-State Survey
Executive Summary During the coronavirus pandemic, Medicaid has played a key role in providing coverage to millions of people who have lost their jobs or their health coverage. In addition, provisions included in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act require states to maintain eligibility…
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Biden Administration Announces It Will Reopen Federal Marketplace Enrollment
Today, January 28, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order establishing a new special enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces in most states, in order to increase health coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. The special enrollment period will begin February 15, 2021 and run through May 15, 2021 and like the annual open…
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Limited Postpartum Medicaid Coverage Extensions are a Missed Opportunity
States are continuing to push for extending Medicaid coverage for postpartum women beyond the current federal cutoff of 60 days after the end of their pregnancy. Just in the last month, three more states submitted waiver applications to CMS: Indiana, Georgia, and Texas. Before the end of the year, we submitted comments on Indiana’s limited…
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CMS Releases Guidance on Unwinding the COVID-19 MOE
States and stakeholders now have the long-awaited CMS guidance on advance planning in Medicaid and CHIP for the end of the public health emergency (PHE). There’s a lot to digest in this 54-page State Health Official letter (SHO). It discusses what happens to the various pandemic-related authorities and waivers and what states must do to…
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Uninsured and Unemployed? Medicaid and CHIP Provide Lifelines to Families in Need
In these tough times, when so many people have lost their jobs and and their health insurance, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are lifelines families can turn to for help covering the cost of health care. Medicaid and CHIP provide free or low-cost health coverage for children and pregnant women with low…
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Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Remains Down in 2019
As of October 2019, the decline in child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP held at .6 percent for calendar year 2019 based on the most recent enrollment data posted by CMS. While this is an improvement over the 2.2 percent decline in 2018, it still indicates that overall enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP is not…
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Fact Checking CMS Administrator’s Claim on Outreach and Enrollment Efforts for Kids
In a recent interview on the PBS News Hour, Kaiser Health News reporter Sarah Varney asked CMS Administrator Seema Verma about steps the administration is taking to address the troubling increase in the number of uninsured children and its connection to the decrease in child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP. Readers of SayAhhh! are already…
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MAGI Application Processing Time Report Shows Modest Improvement in 2019
States are required to routinely report to CMS a number of performance indicators but few have been published to date. The most current and frequent data that are available publicly include application volume by source, determinations by program, and both Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) point-in-time enrollment (which CCF tracks and reports on…
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Latest CMS Data Show Slight Improvement in Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP
Based on the recent release of final August 2019 enrollment data by CMS, the decline in child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP improved ever so slightly from a 3 percent decline in the 18-month trend from December 2017 to June 2019 to a 2.9 percent decline over the 20-month period through August 2019. At the…
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Renewing Bipartisan Commitment to Help Uninsured Children Should be Top Priority
Today we released our ninth annual report that tracks children’s health insurance coverage at the state and national level. This report looks at two-year trends from 2016 to 2018 analyzing American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau. We believe this is the first national report to look at this two-year time period, a time…
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Improving State Administration and Procedures to Regain Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment Momentum for Kids
See our full blog series on evidence-based policies available to policymakers to prevent more eligible children from losing health coverage. As Say Ahhh! readers know, in May, we released a comprehensive report showing that child enrollment dropped by nearly 1 million children in 38 states in 2018 and have continued to track the growing enrollment…
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Maximizing the Use of Technology to Regain Enrollment Momentum in Medicaid
See our full blog series on evidence-based policies available to policymakers to prevent more eligible children from losing health coverage. As Say Ahhh! readers know, in May, we released a comprehensive report showing that child enrollment dropped by nearly 1 million children in 38 states in 2018 and we have continued to track the growing…
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Most Recent CMS Data Show Child Enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP Dips Again in June 2019
In June, another 62,000 children lost Medicaid or CHIP coverage, bringing the 18-month enrollment decline (between December 2017 and June 2019) to more than 1.1 million children nationwide or an overall 3 percent drop. Based on CMS or state enrollment data, 37 states have experienced declines of enrollment ranging from less than 1 percent to…
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Strategies to Address Alarming Decline in Children’s Health Coverage
In this blog series, CCF Executive Director and Research Professor Joan Alker previews her ninth annual report on children’s health coverage and examines the alarming increase in the number of uninsured children after years of bipartisan success in reducing the child uninsured rate. Research Professor Tricia Brooks — a policy expert and former state CHIP…
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Boosting Outreach and Consumer Assistance to Regain Enrollment Momentum
See our full blog series on evidence-based policies available to policymakers to prevent more eligible children from losing health coverage. As Say Ahhh! readers know, in May, we released a comprehensive report showing that child enrollment dropped by nearly 1 million children in 38 states in 2018 and have continued to track the growing enrollment…
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How Can Policymakers Stop More Children From Losing Health Coverage and Regain Enrollment Momentum?
See our full blog series on evidence-based policies available to policymakers to prevent more eligible children from losing health coverage. Sometimes you just hate to be right. The release of topline Census data last week confirmed our fears that the most recent health insurance data would reveal that we lost ground in providing health coverage…
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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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Legislative Victory to Ensure Automatic Early Intervention Eligibility for Illinois’ Lead-Poisoned Children
Lead poisoning is the most pervasive environmental health hazard affecting children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are nearly half a million children ages 1-5 in the United States with blood lead levels (BLL) above 5 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dL) — the reference value recommended by the CDC for initiation of public health actions,…
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Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Slips Again
We continue to closely monitor the trends in child enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) following our report on the precipitous enrollment decline in 2018. As of March 2019, overall child enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP was down an additional 41k children in the first quarter of 2019. However, the national…
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New Data Find Troubling Decline in Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Continues in Many States
Several months ago, we began to highlight concerns over the declining enrollment of children in Medicaid and CHIP. Just last month we published a brief on the unusual decline, noting that child enrollment had dropped by nearly 1 million children in 38 states in 2018. Although overall national enrollment was up by close to 20k…
