CHIP
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Awakening the Force of Two-Generations’ (Children and their Parents) Coverage, Access and Affordability: Historic Gains Worth Celebrating in 2016
By Liane Wong, Dr.P.H. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation While there’s been an incredible amount of buzz around the release of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” this December, a less heralded moment in history was made at the end of 2015. But it’s history worth celebrating for our nation’s families and children, and one…
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NEACH Summit Highlights Continuous Battle for Health Care Access and Coverage for Children
By Ben Koller, Community Catalyst Last month, children’s health advocates and experts from around New England gathered for the New England Alliance for Children’s Health’s (NEACH) annual Children’s Health Care Summit. NEACH, an initiative of Community Catalyst, is a broad-based coalition of health advocates, providers, and legal experts dedicated to improving children’s access to high-quality,…
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No QHPs Comparable to CHIP, Says (Delayed) HHS Certification
Like many others that watch child health policy closely, we have been anxiously awaiting release of the months-overdue Congressionally-mandated study comparing CHIP with coverage children receive through qualified health plans (QHPs) in the marketplaces. Released just before Thanksgiving, the HHS certification summary reinforces what growing evidence has indicated: No QHPs were found comparable to CHIP. Not…
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$32 Million Now Available to Help Reach Eligible but Unenrolled Kids
Most uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but are not yet enrolled so finding them and helping them enroll is critical to successfully reducing the uninsured rate for children. As my colleague Tricia Brooks has pointed out many times, it is no secret that sustained outreach and enrollment support is the key to…
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Estimating 2016 Federal CHIP Allotments (and the bump!)
If you’re like us at CCF, you’ve been really curious about 2016 CHIP allotments under the recent CHIP extension in MACRA. We worked with our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to estimate federal allotments for the 2016 federal fiscal year (1st column), which began October 1, using state-reported May estimates of…
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Obama Administration Should Release Long Awaited CHIP/QHP Study
Some of you may remember that the Affordable Care Act included a provision that required the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to review and certify the comparability of pediatric coverage of qualified health plans to the benefits and cost-sharing of CHIP plans in each state. In fact this analysis was supposed to be…
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Child Uninsured Rate Hits Historic Low – Thanks Goes Mainly to ACA, Medicaid & CHIP
Like many of you I was super excited to see the first round of data from the Census Bureau looking at health insurance rates in 2014 when it came out in late September. Needless to say, 2014 was a big year for health policy changes! Today we are releasing our annual report focused specifically on…
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ACA Helps Bring Child Uninsured Rate Down To New Record Low
This year’s American Community Survey (ACS) data from 2014 provide a first look at how the implementation of the ACA is affecting coverage rates for children – both nationwide and in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Our analysis looks at the profile of uninsured children in 2014 and examines rates of change…
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Taking it to the streets: New ways to get uninsured kids enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP
by Sheila Hoag, Senior Researcher, and Debra Lipson, Senior Fellow, Mathematica Policy Research Traditionally, state and local Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) staff have conducted outreach to uninsured children eligible to help enroll them into these public coverage options. Advocates have also organized public education campaigns and enrollment events. Despite dramatic progress in…
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School Attendance and Health Care: Why Chronic Absenteeism Isn’t Just About Truancy
Editor’s Note: This is part 1 of a two-part conversation with Attendance Works Director Hedy Chang. Chang spoke to us about the critical role health care can play in closing the attendance gap. Attendance Works is a national initiative aimed at advancing student success by removing barriers and encouraging children to attend school regularly. A report Attendance Works…
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CMS Gives States Permanent Option to Use SNAP Data to Enroll and Renew Medicaid and CHIP
It started out as a targeted enrollment strategy – a fast and efficient way to get eligible people enrolled in the ACA’s expanded coverage options by using SNAP enrollment to identify low-income beneficiaries who were income eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid. After all, gross income eligibility for SNAP (aka food stamps) at 130% FPL…
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CHIP Change is Good News for Pennsylvania Children
By Michael Race, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children Pennsylvania is making some improvements to its Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to make sure all kids enrolled in CHIP receive health care coverage that meets the minimum standards of the federal Affordable Care Act. Gov. Tom Wolf announced this week that, starting Dec. 1, all CHIP plans…
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Report Underscores Connection Between Children’s Health and Educational Opportunity
By Sean Miskell Access to quality health coverage for children is certainly important for its own sake, and evidence increasingly suggests the way in which health is connected to other crucial aspect’s of children’s development such as education. A new report from the Education Commission of the States sheds further light on these connections and…
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Immigration Relief for Parents and Youth = Whole Family Health Coverage in California
On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced immigration executive actions that include a new program and an expansion of an existing program. The new program, “Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents”(DAPA), provides temporary work authorization and protection from deportation for certain undocumented parents with U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident (LPR)…
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Recommendations for Changes to the Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures
When CHIP was reauthorized in 2009, it laid out a new agenda for measuring and improving health care quality for children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. CHIPRA called for the development of a Child Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures (which states voluntarily report) and launched a new Pediatric Quality Measures Program that, among…
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CHIP Increases Children’s Access to Dental Care and Reduces Their Unmet Dental Care Needs
By Sophia Duong Tooth decay still remains the most common chronic disease for children in the U.S. today. Progress has been made to address this problem, including a provision in CHIPRA that expanded dental coverage for all children enrolled in CHIP. CHIP has been a vital source of dental health coverage for low-to-middle income children.…
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Children’s Needs – Not Programs – Should Drive Conversations About Future Coverage
The ink is barely dry on the law extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding through 2017, and I’m already hearing rumblings in the health policy community foreshadowing the program’s inevitable demise in 2017. I’ve heard phrases such as: “when CHIP ends”; “How do we best phase out CHIP?” and “We assume CHIP will not…
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Time to Celebrate! California Will Provide Health Coverage for All Kids, Regardless of Immigration Status
It is now time to uncork the champagne and celebrate! California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, signed a budget that includes health coverage for all low-income children, regardless of immigration status today. Under the signed budget, California will provide coverage for allow-income children regardless of immigration status. Coverage would begin in May 2016. The expansion is projected…
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Parents Value Affordability and Benefits (not whole-family plans) in Children’s Coverage
Last week our colleagues at the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured released a new report that children’s advocates, in particular, will find helpful, if not surprising. Helpful because it allows us to hear directly from parents about their children’s coverage experiences and what they value most. Kaiser’s research team conducted 14 focus groups…
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First Peek at Health Coverage Rates Post-ACA: Uninsurance Drop in 2014
Hot off the press! Today we get our first look at annual insurance coverage data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for 2014 and the results are in: fewer people were uninsured in 2014—the first year of full ACA implementation— than 2013. Children and adults in Medicaid expansion states had lower rates of uninsurance.…
