So it may seem like this already happened but today CMS issued the final documents approving Florida’s request to move almost its entire Medicaid program into managed care. The state needed demonstration waiver approval for some (e.g. children on SSI, in foster care, dual-eligibles, etc) but not all of the populations it is seeking to move into […]
A group of influential national organizations, including Georgetown CCF, submitted a letter today to Secretary Sebelius expressing concerns about some features of the pending Section 1115 Medicaid Demonstration request from the state of Indiana. The letter is available here. The Section 1115 waiver request focuses on using Healthy Indiana as a vehicle for the state’s […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued questions and answers today which, among other things, clarified that Section 1115 waiver requests that include enrollment caps or similar policies would not be approved going forward. CMS notes that such policies do not “further the objectives of the program.” Background note here, Section 1115 Secretarial […]
All eyes— again! — have been on my home state of Arkansas this week as the General Assembly late yesterday passed the “private option,” aka the “Arkansas Plan,” or using Medicaid funds to buy exchange coverage for 250,000 uninsured Arkansans starting next year. This was no small feat, given the structural and political barriers at […]
So as Tricia Brooks blogged about yesterday while I was taking the day off, CMS issued some interesting Q and A’s last Friday on how a state might consider taking a premium assistance approach to expanding their Medicaid program. The Q and A’s, to my mind, were a helpful contribution to the ongoing discussions in […]
Just in time for the holiday weekend, CMS issued a Q&A regarding the state option to expand Medicaid by using premium assistance to buy coverage through a qualified health plan in the new insurance marketplaces. Over the past few weeks, “the Arkansas plan” worked itself into a media frenzy and had Medicaid stakeholders concerned over […]
