Enrollment Assistance
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Presumptive Eligibility: Providing Access to Health Care Without Delay and Connecting Children to Coverage
Presumptive eligibility is a state policy option that gives states the flexibility to train health care providers, schools and other community-based organizations and programs to screen eligibility and temporarily enroll eligible persons in Medicaid and CHIP. Currently 31 states use presumptive eligibility for pregnant women and 16 states enroll children presumptively. The following issue brief…
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90/10 Rule is Final: Time to Upgrade to a More Reliable & Efficient Model
Remember driving an older model car that generally got you from point A to point B but not without stalling at a traffic light or having the heater cut out in the dead of winter? That‘s a bit like the old, tired legacy systems currently being used to determine eligibility for Medicaid (and other programs)…
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New Tools for New Times: Using Cell Phones to Help Families Enroll and Stay Enrolled in Health Insurance
Mobile Technology: Smart Tools to Increase Participation in Health Coverage.
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Tapping State Ingenuity to Streamline Access to Benefits
Today, families in need of child care assistance, health coverage and food assistance often have to apply to three different agencies, providing pretty much the same information and documents to each of them. All the while, different eligibility workers handle this information to determine the family’s eligibility separately for each program. Placing such redundant and…
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Holding Steady, Looking Ahead: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility Rules, Enrollment and Renewal Procedures, and Cost Sharing Practices in Medicaid and CHIP, 2010-2011
Over the past year, as the nation’s attention was focused on the country’s economic problems and the debate over the passage of broader health care reform, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) continued to play their vital role of providing coverage to millions of people who otherwise lack affordable coverage options. In 2010,…
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Comments Sought on CMS Proposal to Pay 90% Match on Medicaid Eligibility Systems
By Jocelyn Guyer As I was having a “chat” with my husband earlier this week about who was supposed to have come up with a dinner plan, I started thinking about the similarities between married life and health care reform implementation. (Well, to be honest, this wasn’t my very first thought when I came home…
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Can’t Wait to See What It’s Like to Get Health Insurance Through an Exchange?
Waiting for 2014 is a bit like being a child excitedly anticipating Christmas or Hanukkah. It just can’t get here quickly enough. Thinking about the concept of “no wrong door” and streamlined, paperless enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP certainly leaves me with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. As we approach the holidays, our…
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CMS Proposes A Medicaid Rule You (and States) Might Like
I’m not big on rules. When I ran New Hampshire’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and had to talk with a family who was unhappy about some bureaucratic rule, I often diffused the conversation by saying “I don’t make the rules, if I did there wouldn’t be any.” I know, that was a cop-out but it…
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Behind Door #1….Coverage!
By Claudia Page, Social Interest Solutions The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is truly a game-changer in how consumers will connect to coverage. For many consumers, especially low-income individuals in need of public benefits, seeking coverage today is a complicated maze of paper forms and referrals, disconnected eligibility systems and silos, multiple trips to social services…
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Kansas Tackles Backlog with Commonsense Solutions to Improve Efficiency
By Suzanne Wikle of Kansas Action for Children At a time when I can pay my bills using an Iphone or Blackbery, it seems a no-brainer that states should be pursuing more technological fixes to simplify and streamline processes to ensuring that families are able to access health insurance through Healthwave, Kansas’ Medicaid and Children’s Health…
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Study Concludes That Medicaid Retention Among Children Has Improved
One of the many lessons learned about advancing children’s health coverage is how critical retention in Medicaid and CHIP is to our coverage goals. Dr. Benjamin Sommers drove this point home in a study that concluded that one-third of all eligible, uninsured children in 2006 had actually been enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP in the prior…
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CCF Comments to NAIC on Exchange Coordination with Medicaid and CHIP
CCF Comments to NAIC on Exchange Coordination with Medicaid and CHIP
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Implementing Health Care Reform: Key Questions for States
Under health care reform, the federal government is tasked with establishing the framework under which many provisions of the law are implemented. Within this framework, though, state policymakers will make many key decisions and serve as critical partners in the implementation process. States must begin planning soon for the bulk of reforms that go into…
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Getting it Right: State Policymakers Identify 10 Steps to Successful Implementation of Federal Health Reform
The National Academy of State Health Policy (NASHP) is an independent academy of state health policymakers working together to identify emerging issues, develop policy solutions, and improve state health policy and practice. Recently, its executive committee identified ten aspects of health reform that states must get right in order to successfully implement federal health reform.…
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Arizona Takes First Step to Restore Children’s Health Insurance
By Matt Jewett, Children’s Action Alliance of Arizona Not a lot of good news has come out of Arizona this year. Amidst leading the country in job losses, selling our state Capitol to raise money (we’re leasing it back), and a divisive immigration debate gaining national attention, we also became the first state ever to…
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Health Reform Web Portal Is On Its Way
By Martha Heberlein Mark your calendars – on July 1, 2010, HHS plans on launching the new health reform web portal to provide state-level information about affordable health coverage options. In anticipation of the launch, regulations were released today detailing what information the portal will include and how the data will be collected. The portal will…
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Backlogs Put Children’s Health Coverage at Risk
By Gary Brunk President & CEO, Kansas Action for Children “I just couldn’t believe the state would cut personnel on a program that’s for kids,” commented Harold Stultz to a reporter from the CBS affiliate in Wichita, Kansas. According to a local television news report, Harold’s 12-year-old son Keenan had injured his knee during a…
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What About Those Uninsured Kids? How Many Are Eligible for Medicaid or CHIP?
By Martha Heberlein Medicaid, and it’s companion program, CHIP have had amazing success in reducing the number of uninsured children over the years. The recent Census numbers highlight this fact – in 2008, the number of uninsured children was at its lowest in 20 years, due in large part to public programs filling in the…
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Senate Health Reform Bill’s Medicaid and CHIP Provisions
The Senate bill is finally out, and Majority Leader Reid is looking to get through a cloture vote on Saturday. The key parts of the bill that we’ve been tracking haven’t changed too much from the Senate Finance version. One change of note, the implementation date for the coverage pieces in the bill was moved…
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National Summit Kicks Off Renewed Outreach and Enrollment Effort
An enthusiastic crowd of more than 500 gathered in Chicago last week for the National Children’s Health Insurance Summit hosted by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS). Attendees included CHIPRA outreach grantees, individuals from community-based and provider organizations, national and state experts, and officials from federal and state government. The purpose of the event…