Financing

Financing

President’s Budget Meets with Predictable Response in Unpredictable Year

By Jocelyn Guyer With the release of the President’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal yesterday, CCF staff have begun the annual ritual of digging through lengthy documents and tables to untangle what it might mean for the health care coverage of children and families.  It is a challenging task in the best of times, but […]

Medicaid Growth Slows; Medicaid Directors’ Innovative Efforts Expand

By Tara Mancini Overall, the economic conditions surrounding state Medicaid budgets are continuing to improve, even as states make their way through the first full budget year after the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act enhanced FMAP funding expired.  In January 2012, unemployment hit a three year low of 8.3 percent, down from 9.4 percent a […]

Keeping Score -How Well Are Medicaid and CHIP Doing?

This week’s national football league conference championship games and the theme my colleague, Jocelyn Guyer, picked for her latest blog  (where she admits to an obsession with Tom Brady) got me was thinking about statistics and scores as it relates to children’s coverage. While the uninsured rate is the final score, there are a lot […]

Maryland Kids Win with CHIPRA Performance Bonus

By Leigh Cobb, Advocates for Children and Youth and Suzanne Schlattman, Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative Education Fund Maryland has just received its second Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) performance bonus from CMS.  This recognizes its efforts to identify and enroll eligible children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).  Maryland enrolled […]

Paying Pharmacies Honest Prices for Prescription Drugs

As policymakers across the country look to balance their budgets, some are turning to Medicaid, recycling the same harmful policies they’ve used year-after-year: eliminating coverage for vulnerable Americans, restricting critical benefits like prescription drug coverage, imposing premiums on those who can’t afford them, and slashing already-low provider reimbursement rates. Community Catalyst and Georgetown University Health […]

Setting the Record Straight on Medicaid Spending

By Tara Mancini Last week, NASBO released their 2010 Report of State Expenditures and per usual, the top line message picked-up by most of the media was the large share of state expenditures used on Medicaid.  However, there are always exceptions to the rule, and Kristen Stewart writing for a Salt Lake City Tribune Blog […]