Financing

Financing

Lots of Questions but Few Answers: NAIC’s 2017 Summer Meeting

Originally posted on CHIRblog. For those who follow the fate of the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, it’s hard to escape the daily reports of the status of federal funding for cost-sharing reductions(CSR), the subsidies that lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income marketplace enrollees. The Trump administration won’t commit to funding the reimbursements to insurers for the rest of 2017 […]

No Way to Run a Railroad

The bill unveiled by the Senate leadership last week will cap the federal contribution to Medicaid, shifting large and ever-increasing costs to states and providers and children and families in perpetuity. That much is clear. What is less well understood is that at the same time the bill transfers costs to the states, it transfers […]

Don’t Be Fooled by the Optics

The Senate Leadership has released a new version of a “repeal and replace” bill that may be considered by the full Senate next week. The new bill contains a few tweaks of the Medicaid provisions in the prior version, but these don’t fix the fundamental flaw in the bill for children and families: the cap […]

Medicaid Cap: A Bad Deal that Gets Worse Over Time

As we’ve explained, the Senate Leadership bill to “repeal and replace” the ACA includes a cap on federal Medicaid payments to states with two budget dials: a limit on annual growth and a separate reduction for states that spend more on their Medicaid beneficiaries.  These dials are designed to lower federal spending, and it turns […]

Doubling Down on Dialing Down on Children

Last Thursday, the Senate Leadership released a draft bill to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. The draft is even worse for the 37 million children that Medicaid covers and the providers who serve them than the bill that narrowly passed the House. Not only would the draft dial down the federal payments to […]