Eligibility & Enrollment
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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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Another Troubling Sign: Child Participation Rates in Medicaid and CHIP Dropped in 2017
Since the 2017 ACS data was released in September 2018, we have been concerned about the first increase in the number of uninsured children in a decade as highlighted in our annual uninsured children’s report. We became even more concerned as we watched the number of children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP drop in 2018,…
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Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Decline Suggests the Child Uninsured Rate May Rise Again
Executive Summary There is no debate over the fact that children are losing Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage. Overall, more than 828,000, or 2.2 percent, fewer children were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, combined, at the end of 2018 than the previous year.[note] Georgetown University Center for Children and Families Analysis of…
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Kids Coverage at Risk in Arizona
Kids coverage is again at risk in Arizona, as lawmakers there fight over whether to freeze enrollment in the state’s CHIP program (“KidsCare”), which currently covers 34,316 children. An unusual Arizona law requires the KidsCare program to freeze enrollment if the federal matching rate drops below 100%. Because a temporary increase in the CHIP matching…
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Trump Administration Proposes to Make Fewer Low-Income Individuals and Families Eligible for Medicaid and CHIP Over Time
The Trump Administration has proposed to change how the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is adjusted annually for inflation. While this sounds like a highly technical change, it would do considerable harm. That is because the OPM is used to set the federal poverty line, which in turn is used to determine income eligibility…
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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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Hot Off the Press: Annual KFF 50-State Survey on Medicaid
This 17th annual KFF survey and key resource for Medicaid stakeholders reports eligibility, enrollment, renewal and cost-sharing policies in place as of January 2019 for children, pregnant women, parent/caretakers, and low-income adults in Medicaid and CHIP. Like the previous year, for the most part states continued to refine their efforts in delivering a streamlined, data-driven…
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Child Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP Down 600k Children in 2018
After CMS released October 2018 Medicaid and CHIP data, we reported that child enrollment was down by more than half a million children in the first 10 months of 2018. So needless to say, we were anxious to see the final November 2018 numbers, which were just released. In November 2018, child enrollment in Medicaid…
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MACPAC Releases Medicaid Eligibility, Enrollment and Renewal Case Studies Examining New Data-Driven Processes
Before the holidays, MACPAC and its contractor, SHADAC, (the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota) released findings of a study that examined the status of the new data-driven enrollment and renewal processes enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act. The case studies report on how six states – Arizona,…
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Louisiana Medicaid Audit Report Misses the Mark
A recent legislative audit of the adult Medicaid expansion in Louisiana compares apples and oranges to arrive at a conclusion that millions of dollars were paid on behalf of Medicaid enrollees who did not qualify. But is it accurate to characterize these individuals as ineligible? No, not when you consider the flexibility states have in…
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States Lean In as the Federal Government Cuts Back: Navigator and Advertising Funding for the ACA’s Sixth Open Enrollment
On November 1, the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) insurance marketplaces will launch their sixth enrollment season. This year, the challenges they face may be greater than laster year, with the loss of the individual mandate penalty as an enrollment incentive and the emergence of a parallel, unregulated market that could siphon away healthy enrollees. Yet the Trump administration has…
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Teens Discover Peer-to-Peer Outreach Works to Connect More Students with Health Coverage
This year the Tennessee Justice Center launched a Student Ambassador Program to engage young people in our Insure Our Kids Campaign. This campaign seeks to get every eligible child in Tennessee enrolled in health insurance coverage by educating the community and providing enrollment assistance. To find and enroll those uninsured students, we turned to their…
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There’s a Medicaid ‘subsidy cliff’ health-care officials are worried about
The Washington Post By: Colby Itkowitz There’s a significant population of Medicaid recipients who would lose their health-care coverage if states began requiring them to work — regardless of whether they got a job. … Joan Alker, a Georgetown University public-policy professor who is closely following the waiver submissions, told me the state’s two extra years of…
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Another View — Tricia Brooks: Citizenship paperwork would turn back NH Medicaid
New Hampshire Union Leader By: Tricia Brooks New Hampshire is proposing to add burdensome paperwork requirements for U.S. citizens to prove eligibility for Medicaid. That’s one of the requests it is making in its Medicaid waiver proposal. This is perplexing because the state and federal governments have spent millions of dollars establishing systems that electronically…
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Coverage Gap Leaves Millions of Americans without Affordable Health Insurance
According to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 2.2 million adults are in a “coverage gap,” resulting from the failure of 17 states to expand Medicaid. As Say Ahhh! readers may recall, the coverage gap occurs among poor, non-elderly adults in non-expansion states who have incomes too high to be eligible for Medicaid…
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Why is NH Proposing to Replace Proven Electronic Citizenship Verification with Burdensome Medicaid Paperwork Requirements?
My home state of New Hampshire is proposing to add burdensome paperwork requirements for U.S. citizens to prove eligibility for Medicaid. That’s one of the requests they are making in the Medicaid waiver proposal that is up for state comment before the end of the week. This is perplexing because the state and federal governments…
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New Data Show Progress Covering Uninsured Children Stalled
I previously wrote about the growing gap between the rate of uninsured adults living in non-expansion states and expansion states. Next, I am analyzing the rate of uninsured children using the same data source, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). We are anxiously waiting for the release of the American Community Survey in the fall…
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The Medicaid Expansion is Good for Parents AND Good for Children
Parents and children are more likely to have health coverage now than they were before the Affordable Care Act took effect. The Urban Institute released new research that shows the rate of insurance coverage for parents and children increased significantly between June/September 2013 and March 2017. During the time period, the rate of coverage increased…
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New Urban Institute Interactive Analysis Shows Rising Cost for Families Using Employer-Sponsored Insurance
It’s no secret that private health insurance is expensive and that, over time, employers have passed more and more of the cost onto workers and their families. Still, when federal policy changes are being contemplated, there is often the sense that families have access to employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) to fall back on. This is especially…
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States Could Lose Cost-Effective Express Lane Eligibility if Congress Fails to extend CHIP Promptly
When CHIP was reauthorized in 2009, it provided a new tool – known as Express Lane Eligibility (ELE) – for states to enroll and renew children’s coverage. ELE allows states the flexibility to use findings from other public programs, like SNAP, to determine eligibility for Medicaid or CHIP. ELE can be used at enrollment, renewal,…
