We’ve written a lot in the past few months about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Medicaid and CHIP. We’ve also written about the devastating impact of the pandemic on the economy and state budgets. Unfortunately, the devastation doesn’t stop there. Today, we invited two of our partners at the Children’s Defense Fund, Stefanie […]
Access to behavioral health services has long lagged behind physical health, despite a clear and growing need. The need has no doubt been exacerbated by the stress of the new coronavirus. Finding and ensuring health coverage for pregnant women and children’s mental health services – ones that are appropriate for their developmental stage — can […]
Introduction Medicaid is and will continue to play a central role in the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to both the health crisis and the ensuing economic crisis. With unemployment rapidly rising to double digits and workers (and their spouses and dependent children) losing their employer-sponsored insurance, it has been widely expected […]
CBS News The first deadlines to qualify for fallback coverage under the Affordable Care Act are looming for many laid-off workers who lost their health insurance in the coronavirus shutdown… The federal-state Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid cover kids in families with incomes well above the poverty level. “Medicaid is open year round if […]
The House-passed HEROES Act (H.R. 6800) would provide an additional one-year increase to the federal Medicaid matching rate (from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021), on top of the FMAP increase enacted as part of the Families First Act (P.L. 116-127). As I have explained, the further FMAP increase, in turn, would increase the […]
The temporary 6.2 percentage point increase in the federal Medicaid matching rate enacted as part of the Families First COVID-19 legislation (P.L. 116-127) benefited the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as well. Because the formula used to calculate each state’s CHIP matching rate is based on the regular FMAP, the Families First FMAP increase resulted […]
