CHIP
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A Double Benefit – More Kids Enrolled and Administrative Savings
We have long been fans of the enormous success that Louisiana has had in improving retention among children in Medicaid and CHIP through administrative renewals and ex parte. I mean, really, who wouldn’t be wowed by the fact that just 1% of children lose coverage at renewal for procedural reasons! Not to mention the low, low…
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Continuous Coverage – Critical for Chronic Conditions
By Tara Mancini Our Say Ahhh! audience is certainly aware of the benefits of implementing continuous coverage, namely, how it can improve health outcomes for beneficiaries while also decreasing administrative and utilization costs. As of January 1, 2012, 28 states offer 12-month continuous eligibility in their CHIP programs (23 in Medicaid). Alabama is one of…
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Welcoming Children to the World Justice Brennan Style
NPR reporter Nina Totenberg tells the story of how Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan briefly met her sister the day she learned she was pregnant. He got caught up in the excitement and eight months later, remembered the news and asked Nina about her sister’s due date. When he learned that Nina’s new niece,…
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Child Well Being Index Report Provides Valuable Data to State Advocates
By Tara Mancini As we have reported, the U.S. has recently achieved some of the lowest uninsured rates for children on record. Yet, over the same period of time, children continued to experience increased rates of poverty. Because we know that poverty is distributed unevenly in the country, and in fact is often concentrated, the key message…
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Report Finds CHIP Crowd-Out Fears to be Unfounded
Remember all those claims about how private insurers would be “crowded out” if Children’s Health Insurance Program income eligibility guidelines were to be expanded? Now a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that those fears are likely to be unfounded as there is little evidence of any crowd out in the states that…
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Navigating Medicaid, CHIP and the Exchanges
States are busily working to transform their tugboat-type eligibility and enrollment systems into sleek 12-meter racing yachts of the America’s Cup variety. But will simplified, streamlined eligibility and enrollment systems mean smooth sailing for everyone? Not likely. No matter how fast and dynamic these new systems are, it still will take all hands on deck…
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New Study Examines the Impact of Premiums on Enrollment
In the last year, we’ve examined the potential impact of proposed premium changes in Florida and Wisconsin, but a new study in Health Affairs provides some real-world data on what actually happens when premiums rise (not that we in any way condone experiments in children’s coverage of this sort). Healthy Kids in Los Angeles County is…
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Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs Provides Important Data
By Tara Mancini Say Ahhh! readers should know about an important new data source on Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN); the 2009/10 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. This is the third survey in this series, which is funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) and conducted by…
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Patriots Win 103 – 33
The Giants may be bringing home the Lombardi but Patriots fans are taking home the CHIP III trophy thanks to efforts by Dayanne Leal and Health Care for All Massachusetts. Patriots’ fans brought in 103 comments in support of efforts to connect kids to coverage. (The Giants’ fans? Well, perhaps they were a little preoccupied…
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CHIPRA at Work Three Years Later: Shaping State Actions and Connecting Children to Coverage
The enactment of CHIPRA three years ago gave states additional tools and resources to maintain and improve children’s access to health care. In recent years, the number of uninsured children has decreased by one million, even as child poverty has jumped to alarmingly high levels and more parents and adults have joined the ranks of…
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CHIPRA: Running the Ball for Children’s Coverage
It’s a really big weekend: the third anniversary of CHIPRA and the Super Bowl rematch between the New England Patriots and New York Giants. What more could a child health policy wonk and Patriots fan, want? There is a connection between these seemingly disparate events. Thousands of kids watching the action will be dreaming of…
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Giants v. Patriots on Covering Kids – Who are you Rootin’ For?
Undoubtedly you’ve heard about Super Bowl XLVI , but have you heard of CHIP III which is also taking the field this weekend? CHIP is short for the Children’s Health Insurance Program which was reauthorized three years ago this weekend. To mark the occasion, we’re hosting a Super Blog-Off between Patriots fans and Giants fans. But…
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The Patriots have Vince Wilfork. Who is defending your child’s health?
By Dayanne Leal and the team at Health Care For All Massachusetts On Sunday, the Patriots are going to win the Super Bowl. Really, I don’t know why the Giants would even bother to show up. And since a 4th banner in Gillette Stadium is inevitable, it’s worth asking to what can we credit this success? Some…
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New York is Taking GIANT Steps to Cover Kids
By the Community Service Society of New York, Children’s Defense Fund – New York, Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy and Health Care for All New York As the New York Giants head to the Super Bowl this year, another giant comes to mind, the title character from Roald Dahl’s famous book, The Big Friendly Giant (BFG). Just…
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Keeping Score -How Well Are Medicaid and CHIP Doing?
This week’s national football league conference championship games and the theme my colleague, Jocelyn Guyer, picked for her latest blog (where she admits to an obsession with Tom Brady) got me was thinking about statistics and scores as it relates to children’s coverage. While the uninsured rate is the final score, there are a lot…
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Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2011-2012
Amid ongoing state budget pressures, a requirement in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that states maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP was central in preserving coverage during 2011. In addition, more than half of states (29) made improvements in their programs. Most of these improvements involved greater use of technology to boost program efficiency and…
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Medicaid and CHIP – Performing Under Pressure
By Martha Heberlein and Tricia Brooks For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting (and you can count us, too!) the release of the annual survey on Medicaid and CHIP, today is your lucky day. In partnership with the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, we released “Performing Under Pressure: Annual Findings of…
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Secrets to Success: An Analysis of Four States at the Forefront of the Nation’s Gains in Children’s Health Coverage
The uninsured rate for children dropped to 8% in 2010, the lowest point ever achieved since the federal government began tracking this statistic in 1987. The following issue-brief attempts to gain an increased understanding of factors contributing to the success in coverage of children by conducting site visits and interviews with key stakeholders in four…
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Essential Health Benefits: What Does the CHIP Experience Show Us?
So my previous blog on this topic talked about how the CHIP/Essential Health Benefits analogy has its limits – still it is interesting to look at the choices that states have made for their benefits packages in separate state CHIP programs. According to data collected and released by NASHP from mid-2008, the most popular choice…
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NASHP and Children’s Dental Health Project Issue Report
By Leigha Basini, National Academy for State Health Policy The new year brings many new things: new discussions about CCIIO’s newly released Essential Health Benefits (EHB) Bulletin and benefit provisions in the seemingly still new Affordable Care Act. But state CHIP directors may also be thinking about a slightly older benefit provision–the CHIPRA dental mandate. NASHP,…