CHIP
-
MACPAC Worries States Will Quickly Trim Medicaid Rolls Post-Pandemic
Inside Health Policy By: Dorothy Mills-Gregg CMS needs to release guidance before the end of the public health emergency on how states should restart the Medicaid redetermination process, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Payment and Access Commission members said, as they fear states might be too anxious to remove beneficiaries and overwhelm the system….…
-
MACPAC Explores Why Few Providers Sought Medicaid, CHIP Relief
Inside Health Policy By: Michelle Stein Congress’ Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program advisers want to look deeper into how Medicaid provider relief efforts are going, after finding that less than 15% of potentially eligible providers applied for Medicaid relief funding by the end of August. As of mid-September, only $2.2 billion of the $15…
-
Experts seek answers on why few Medicaid providers sought COVID-19 relief
Healthcare Dive By: Samantha Liss Commissioners that help guide federal Medicaid policy raised concerns Thursday over why few Medicaid providers applied for federal relief funds amid the pandemic. Of the $175 billion allocated by Congress to help providers, about $15 billion has been allocated for Medicaid providers specifically. However, despite the billions in relief available,…
-
Children’s Health and Well Being During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Kaiser Family Foundation By: Rachel Garfield and Priya Chidambaram The debate over school openings has highlighted the implications of the coronavirus pandemic for children and their families. While experts continue to gather data on children’s risk for contracting and transmitting coronavirus, current research suggests that though children are more likely to be asymptomatic and less…
-
Covid Causes Vast Drop in Critical Early Child Care for Poor
Bloomberg Quint The Covid-19 pandemic is harming the long-term health of low-income children, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Wednesday. Vaccination rates, primary preventive care, and screenings among children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program have plummeted during the pandemic, the CMS said. Between March and May, vaccinations for children under…
-
Another Sign that We Can Do Better in Covering Children Who are Eligible but Not Enrolled in Medicaid
A new report from the Urban Institute finds that participation of uninsured children in Medicaid and CHIP stalled in 2018. While this analysis lags behind the latest data (2019) on health insurance status released by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey last month, it continues to show the direct correlation between the child insurance rate…
-
HHS “Good Guidance” Rule: Not so Good for Medicaid and CHIP
The Centers for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) recently issued a letter to State Medicaid Directors laying out ways in which state Medicaid agencies can advance value-based care. The 33-page SMD includes numerous references to requirements that states must meet if they want to implement VBP approaches, such as “states must have claims systems that…
-
More Evidence Medicaid Work Requirements Don’t Actually Work
A new study from Ben Sommers and other researchers at Harvard University finds that Medicaid work requirements fail to promote employment but do result in more people losing their health coverage and may promote other negative health outcomes. The study, published in Health Affairs, found that negative economic consequences ensued as well – with medical…
-
Medicaid Expansion Helped Close Coverage Gaps for Pregnant Women, New Study Finds
Medicaid expansion helped close coverage gaps for low-income women in the months before, during and after pregnancy, reducing the number of women who were uninsured during this critical time, new research published this month in Health Affairs found. The authors define “low-income” as a woman whose income is below 138% FPL, the eligibility limit for…
-
New 50-State Scorecard Exposes Missed Opportunities to Address Health Equity
Today The Commonwealth Fund released its annual scorecard on state health system performance. The report pulls together 49 indicators of health coverage, spending, quality and outcomes data to rank state health system performance. The accompanying state profiles provide additional context on the rankings, allowing states to get a comprehensive look at each state’s health care…
-
KFF Brief Points to Need for Greater Investment in Consumer Assistance to Connect People to Health Coverage
This week, I’m reading findings from a new Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) brief about who uses consumer assistance programs established under the Affordable Care Act, who does and does not get help, why they seek assistance, and the difference the programs can make in consumers’ ability to obtain health coverage. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Consumer Assistance…
-
Families with Young Children Need More Support During COVID-19, Surveys Show
Since April, the researchers at University of Oregon’s Center for Translational Neuroscience have been conducting a weekly national survey of households with children age 5 and under and the findings are clear: families with young children are stressed, and they’re increasingly facing hunger and unemployment. These challenges, the authors write, are, “negatively affecting caregiver well-being,…
-
Millions Of Children Have Lost Their Health Insurance—What’s Our Plan?
Health Affairs By: Doug Strane The COVID-19 pandemic has constrained the economy in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only a few months ago. After years of economic expansion, unemployment reached 11.1 percent in June… Together these programs already insure nearly 40 percent of all children, and they will require both short-term buttressing…
-
Keeping Kids Connected to Care During COVID-19
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) have teamed up to protect children’s health and well-being with the launch of a joint project: “Keeping Kids Connected to Care During COVID-19 and Beyond”. AAP and CCF are working with Manatt Health, Family Voices and a network of children’s…
-
Medicaid Managed Care Transparency: Another Leap Forward
Last October, transparency in Medicaid managed care took a leap forward with the publication of a path-breaking study by Dr. Andrew Bindman and his colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco. The researchers examined the performance of individual managed care organizations (MCOs) participating in the state’s Medicaid program with respect to quality of…
-
Medicaid Expansion Will Benefit Missouri Kids
Next week, on August 4th, voters in Missouri will have a chance to weigh in on Medicaid expansion — becoming the 6th state to do so. Oklahoma voters just passed a similar expansion measure on June 30 of this year, leaving only 13 states left still refusing federal Medicaid funding to extend affordable health coverage…
-
Snapshot of Children with Medicaid by Race and Ethnicity
Introduction Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are primary sources of health coverage for low-income children, especially for children of color because they are more likely to be economically disadvantaged. As such, these sources of health insurance offer an opportunity to assess and address existing health disparities. In this analysis, we use the…
-
Coalition Calls on Secretary Azar to Use Medicaid Waiver Authority to Promote Health Equity
In light of the heightened national attention to the injustice of structural racism, a lengthy list of diverse national and state groups representing patients, providers, racial justice organizations and others sent a letter to Secretary Azar urging him to take two immediate steps with respect to pending Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration requests that would help…
-
Proposed Medicaid and CHIP Eligibility Rule Overhaul Back on the Docket at OMB
In a speech to the National Association of Medicaid Directors last November, Administrator Seema Verma announced that CMS would be overhauling regulations to tighten the standards for eligibility verification in Medicaid and CHIP. For many months, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) was listed on the regulatory review dashboard at the Office of Information and…
-
How much will COVID-19 drive up uninsured numbers? New report underscores how hard it is to know
The year 2020 is certainly going to be one to remember in the history books. The current recession associated with the pandemic is undoubtedly going to result in more people enrolling in public coverage and, sadly, will also drive up the uninsured rate in the U.S (especially in states that have not expanded Medicaid). But…
