Financing
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Finance Committee Holds Hearing on Medicaid and Medicare
By Martha Heberlein As negotiations stalled on addressing the debt ceiling and ongoing budget deficits, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing today on the long-term sustainability of Medicare and Medicaid. While much of the focus was on Medicare, Medicaid also played a prominent role, especially around proposals to block grant the program. In response…
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Republican Governors’ Letter Calls for More Cost-Shifting to States and Local Governments
In a letter to members of Congress outlining their guiding principles for how Medicaid should be changed in to order to address the challenges states are facing in sustaining their programs, Republican governors echoed earlier calls for block grants and more flexibility in how they run their programs along with repeal of the health care…
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Massive Declines in Enrollment Predicted Under a Medicaid Block Grant
By Martha Heberlein A recent study from the folks at the Urban Institute provides state-by-state enrollment projections under the House budget plan. I don’t think any regular Say Ahhh! readers will be surprised to learn that the news isn’t good. Under the plan, there will be a 44% reduction in federal Medicaid funds, including spending…
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Senators Stand Shoulder-to-Shoulder to Defend Medicaid
Yesterday, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) announced that 41 senators would stand strong and support Medicaid during the ongoing budget deficit and debt ceiling negotiations. This is welcome news given the increased focus on Medicaid lately as the potential source of savings to rein in the deficit and cut a deal on the debt ceiling. All…
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Once Again, a Look at the State Budget Facts
By Martha Heberlein It seems that every time the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) releases a new report on the state of state budgets, another blog or paper is written to correct a misrepresentation of Medicaid’s role. Now, this is certainly not meant to be disparaging against NASBO – their reports are a…
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Capping Federal Spending Imperils Success on Kids Health
By Joe Touschner Some think that a good way to address federal deficits is to establish a cap on federal spending. A cap is needed, they say, to preserve the prosperity of future generations (i.e. today’s children). And a cap sounds like a simple and effective way to address the nation’s deficit. While politicians seem…
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Family-to-Family Organizations Provide Vital Support to Children with Special Health Care Needs
The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced $4.9 million in new funding to support families of children with special health care needs. The funding for the grants was made available through the new health reform law. Grants were awarded to state Family-to-Family Health Centers. For some of these groups, this is new funding…
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Proposed Federal Spending Caps Threaten Successful Efforts on Children’s Health
Lawmakers in the House and Senate have proposed budget plans to address the federal deficit by capping spending, making deep cuts in Medicaid, and/or restructuring the way the nation finances health care for children, seniors, and people with disabilities. These budget plans will devastate the successful steps the nation has taken to provide quality, affordable…
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Out of the Shadows: Exchange/Medicaid IT 2.0 Guidance Says No Need for Duplicate Eligibility Systems
In this week’s release of the Exchange/Medicaid IT 2.0 guidance, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) firmly squashed speculation that states will need to operate a “shadow eligibility system” for determining who is newly eligible for Medicaid and therefore qualifies for 100% federal funding. Future federal rulemaking is expected to propose other methods…
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Medicaid is the MVP of Children’s Health
By Jocelyn Guyer As I try to wrap my mind around the suggestion that CHIP’s success is a reason to convert Medicaid to a capped block grant, I wonder whether these guys have ever watched soccer or any team sport for that matter. Maybe I spent a little too much time on the soccer sidelines…
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WI Premium Increase Proposal Would Not Achieve Real Savings
By Wesley Prater A couple of months ago, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin introduced his biennium budget for 2011-13 which consisted of cuts of nearly $500 million to Wisconsin’s BadgerCare Plus, the state’s Medicaid program. Additionally, the Governor’s Budget Repair Bill (yes, that same bill that would undermine collective bargaining rights) would give Wisconsin’s Department…
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Utah Improves Timeliness and Reduces Cost with E-Communications
In these days of tight budgets, states are looking for every single penny they can save. Our friends in Utah are saving more than a few – 52¢ to be exact – every time they send an electronic notice to someone enrolled in Medicaid. This is one of those win-win strategies where saving money also…
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Vermont’s Green Mountain Care Puts State on Path to Universal Coverage
By Donna Sutton Fay, Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security Education Fund Vermont has been successful in incrementally expanding its public health insurance programs for the past twenty-five years. Subsidized coverage is available to children and uninsured adults with incomes up to 300% of the FPL. We have one of the lowest rates of uninsured…
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Rhode Island Waiver – Model or Sweetheart Deal?
Proponents of block granting Medicaid have been pointing to Rhode Island’s Section 1115 research and demonstration waiver that includes a global cap on federal spending as evidence of the success of this approach. But as an article that appears in yesterday’s New York Times underscores, this analogy is just another example of the “fact free”…
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Health Subcommittee Passes Repeal of Medicaid/CHIP Stability Protections (MoE)
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health took the first step toward unraveling the remarkable success our nation has achieved in connecting kids with coverage and driving uninsurance rates for children down to a historic low. Today the Subcommittee approved “The State Flexibility Act” (H.R. 1683), a bill introduced by Representative Gingrey (R-GA) that…
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Legislative Week in Review
There are a lot of bad ideas floating around Congress that could harm children and families who rely upon Medicaid or CHIP to meet their health care needs. Here are the highlights of what happened on the hill this week on various proposals that would undermine the stability of Medicaid and CHIP coverage. Senate Finance…
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CMS Asks Florida ‘Where’s the Beef’? (Do States Need a Waiver to do Managed Care?)
Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent a letter to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration in response to the state’s request for waiver authority to expand managed care statewide. CMS responded by saying that their Medicaid waiver extension request cannot be granted because it lacks a specific plan. The state’s…
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What If Ryan’s Medicaid Block Grant Were Already in Effect?
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Congressional Budget Office has found that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to block-grant Medicaid would significantly shift costs to states, beneficiaries, and health care providers. To help illustrate how states would likely fare under the proposal over time, the Center on Budget and…
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Tapping Medicaid Performance Funds – No Need to Worry
By Jocelyn Guyer Today, we finally saw details of the continuing resolution to fund the federal government through the end of fiscal year 2011. One item that jumped out at us is a proposal to take $3.5 billion of the money that had been set aside for “performance bonuses” to reward states for enrolling kids…
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Medicaid Block Grant Proposal Would Impact Pregnant Women
By Amanda Jezek, March of Dimes House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s recently released 2012 budget resolution was passed by the committee and is expected to be considered by the full House of Representatives this week. It includes a proposal to convert the federal share of the Medicaid program into capped block grants to states.…