Eligibility & Enrollment
89,000 Pennsylvania Children Lose Medicaid Due to Shortsighted Policies & Bureaucratic Backlogs
By George Hoover, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children Having dedicated my career to making health care coverage accessible to all Pennsylvanians, I am dismayed over recent actions by the state that are jeopardizing health care access for children. The number of Pennsylvania children covered through Medicaid has plummeted by about 89,000 in recent months, including many […]
A Question of Priorities
By Martha Heberlein As the Energy and Commerce Committee searches for options to save the Department of Defense from cuts, coverage for millions of children, parents, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities could end up on the chopping block. This is just one of a number of distressing offsets that also includes repealing […]
Medicaid Enrollment Slows While State Revenues Steadily Increase
By Tara Mancini It’s true of most states that Medicaid enrollment has slowed and state revenues are steadily increasing. Yet, as governor’s prepared their budgets for fiscal year 2013, enough uncertainty lingered that when budgeting for Medicaid, there continued to be a focus on cost containment. Key findings from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and […]
Continuous Coverage – Critical for Chronic Conditions
By Tara Mancini Our Say Ahhh! audience is certainly aware of the benefits of implementing continuous coverage, namely, how it can improve health outcomes for beneficiaries while also decreasing administrative and utilization costs. As of January 1, 2012, 28 states offer 12-month continuous eligibility in their CHIP programs (23 in Medicaid). Alabama is one of […]
Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2011-2012
Amid ongoing state budget pressures, a requirement in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that states maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP was central in preserving coverage during 2011. In addition, more than half of states (29) made improvements in their programs. Most of these improvements involved greater use of technology to boost program efficiency and […]