Financing
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New National Health Expenditure Projections Contain Several Key Findings Relevant to Medicaid
New National Health Expenditure (NHE) projections recently issued by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services included several key findings related to the Medicaid program: Aging of the population. In its new NHE projections, the CMS actuaries unsurprisingly find that the aging of the baby boom generation is “anticipated…
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Administration’s Budget Proposal Includes $1.4 Trillion in Medicaid Cuts
The Administration today released a budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts on October 1 (FY 2019). On the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the budget proposal is irrelevant. The budget proposes to extend CHIP through 2019; as Kelly Whitener explains, the Bipartisan Budget Act signed into law last week extends CHIP through 2027. …
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Bipartisan Budget Act Funds CHIP for Four More Years and Includes Other Important Health Care Provisions
Congress passed another short-term continuing resolution (CR) early this morning after a brief government shutdown. The Bipartisan Budget Act funds the government through March 23, but this one is very different from the previous CRs. One metric of how it’s different is the length – this one comes in at over 650 pages whereas the…
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HEALTHY KIDS ACT (Helping Ensure Access for Little Ones, Toddlers and Hopeful Youth by Keeping Insurance Delivery Stable Act)
As we have noted in earlier posts, the Continuing Resolution (CR) passed on January 22 includes six years of funding for CHIP and other CHIP-related provisions that we’ll unpack here. Funding CHIP is now funded through federal fiscal year 2023, or September 30, 2023. Though the Secretary will have to determine the allotment amount for…
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CHIP Extended for 6 Years – A Huge Relief but Long Overdue
The House and Senate finally passed a continuing resolution that extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years incorporating the policy language that is essentially the same as the deal that Senators Hatch and Wyden agreed to back in September.[1] The fact that CHIP was extended 114 days after funding expired is unprecedented and…
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Government Shutdown – Where Does CHIP Stand?
I am not sure why I thought I would find it cathartic to write a blog on a Friday night explaining what we know about where things stand on CHIP. It’s been hard to listen to all the political grandstanding as the government shutdown looms. I looked up the first blog I wrote saying that…
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A Ten Year CHIP Extension Presents a Rare Win-Win Opportunity for Congress
Two weeks ago, I blogged about a new CBO score for the KIDS Act – extending CHIP funding for 5 years was on sale for the bargain price of $800 million. Last week, CBO released another update – extending CHIP funding for 10 years would save $6 billion. The rationale for both scores is the…
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When Will States Run Out of Federal CHIP Funds? (January 2018 Update)
A new report by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families estimates that if Congress does not approve funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in January, an estimated 24 states (including D.C.) could face CHIP funding shortfalls. Coverage beyond February is most at risk for approximately 1.7 million children in 21 of the 24 states with…
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CBO Releases New CHIP Score
The hot news here at CCF today is the new CBO score for the bipartisan, bicameral 5-year CHIP deal – the KIDS Act – it now costs $800 million instead of $8.2 billion. And no, that is not a typo. This leaves a lot of people asking – what changed? Before getting into why the…
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Wisconsin’s Partial Medicaid Expansion Covers Far Fewer People at Much Greater Cost
Among the 19 states that have yet to expand Medicaid to all adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, Wisconsin is the only one that covers all adults that are below the poverty level. It’s a policy choice that compares favorably to the 18 other “non-expansion” states; however, Wisconsin’s partial expansion covers…
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Short-Term Fix is Not Enough to Reassure Children and Families CHIP is Secure
Congress created a crisis when it failed to meet the deadline to extend CHIP funding on September 30, and they have been kicking the can down the road ever since. Their neglect has left states trying to hold their CHIP programs together as best they can under very difficult circumstances, while holding out hope that…
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If Congress Fails to Fund CHIP Before Holidays, Children Likely to Lose Coverage in New Year
Funding for CHIP expired on September 30th of this year. Despite bipartisan agreement in both the House and the Senate on a five year extension of CHIP, Congress has still not managed to get the job done. CHIP is a block grant program, which means that unlike Medicaid, Congress must act to ensure that it gets…
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Will Congress Leave Children Out in the Cold?
The first snow fell in Washington this past weekend. As I felt the chill in the air, I thought about the millions of children who get their health coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). For many of these children, the mercury is about to plummet. Federal CHIP funding expired September 30, but here…
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No Set Federal Notice Period for CHIP – States Decide How Much Notice to Give Families Losing Coverage
According to a new brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation, at least five states (Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, and Utah) plan to end coverage for children enrolled in separate CHIP programs by January 31, 2017. One of those states (Colorado) has started to notify families that their children may lose coverage if Congress does not…
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CMS Guidance Increases Urgency for Congress to Extend CHIP Funding
Last week, the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) released an informational bulletin with guidance for states in the event they exhaust remaining CHIP funds before Congress acts. This is just another sign of how perilously close we are to seeing children’s coverage disrupted. And even if Washington can be counted on to eventually…
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CHIP Funding Delays Risk Enrollment Freezes that would Reverse Success on Kid’s Health Coverage
Last week we released a new report on the consequences of delayed Congressional action on CHIP. Federal funding for CHIP expired 32 days ago, an unprecedented lapse in CHIP’s 20-year history. States are quickly running out of federal funding, with Arizona, Minnesota, and Oregon slated to exhaust federal funds before the end of December. If…
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Why Projecting When States Will Run Out of CHIP Funds is a Moving Target
This week we released a new report on the consequences of delayed Congressional action on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Federal funding for CHIP expired 27 days ago, an unprecedented lapse in CHIP’s 20-year history. Some policymakers have reasoned that the situation is not urgent because all states have some unspent funds available from…
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What are the Consequences of Congressional Inaction on CHIP?
Funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expired 26 days ago and Congress still hasn’t acted. I have been working on CHIP since its inception, and this is unprecedented! Today we are releasing a report that unpacks some of the implications of Congressional inaction beyond the beltway. We didn’t survey all 50 states but…
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Kaiser Family Foundation 50-State Budget Survey Provides Insight Into Medicaid Trends
The Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual 50-state budget survey is here! This year, they’ve captured the findings in three reports – Medicaid Enrollment & Spending Growth: FY 2017 & 2018, providing an analysis of national trends in Medicaid enrollment and spending; Medicaid Moving Ahead in Uncertain Times, taking a more detailed look at the policy and…
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Continued Congressional Inaction on CHIP Underscores Need for Change in Priorities
Last week, as has been widely reported, President Trump issued an Executive Order allowing short-term insurance plans to be offered for up to an entire year and the sale of association health plans. As my colleague, Sabrina Corlette, wrote in US News & World Report, “The executive order sets the stage for new health plans…
