Marketplace
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Open 24/7, Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Gains Top 7.2 Million
The June Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Report, released last week by CMS, shows that 7.2 million more people are now covered by Medicaid and CHIP than before the beginning of open enrollment last October. It’s not surprising that states expanding Medicaid have seen an 18.5 percent increase in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment, while those opting…
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Navigator Resource Guide Helps Answer Consumers’ Questions about Health Insurance & Coverage
We at CHIR and CCF continue to field questions from Navigators and assisters as part of our Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project to provide technical assistance and resources to assisters of all stripes. Though Open Enrollment is a distant memory and folks are gearing up for round 2 later this year, consumers continue to turn…
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Congress and States Work to Extend ACA’s Medicaid Primary Care Bump
By Sophia Duong A hot topic recently has been the extension of the Medicaid payment rate increases for primary care services. The ACA required states to reimburse primary care physicians who treat Medicaid beneficiaries at the higher Medicare rate for 2013 and 2014. The rate bump has garnered large support from physicians and hospitals, and…
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“Peace of Mind”: professional dancers, the ACA, and affordable coverage
Professional dancers push their bodies for years to meet the physical demands of their work, which makes access to health insurance a high priority for these performing artists. A recent Kaiser Health News article examined the issue of health insurance affordability and access through the lens of a ballet dancer, highlighting the peace of mind…
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The Tax Rules that Health Care Assisters Need to Know
By January Angeles, Center of Budget and Policy Priorities “Navigators” and others helping people apply for health coverage need to understand basic tax filing rules because eligibility for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and premium tax credits for coverage bought through federal and state Marketplaces is based on Internal Revenue Code definitions of…
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Advocates Urge HHS to Improve Enrollment for Immigrant Families
Today, CCF joined more than 140 national and state organizations asking Secretary of Health and Human Services Burwell to work expeditiously to remove barriers that make it difficult for eligible immigrant and mixed status families to obtain health coverage. The letter focuses on 5 serious barriers that need to be resolved so that eligible individuals…
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All Enrollees Should Contact the Marketplace at Renewal
In recent guidance, CMS revealed its plan for the first round of financial eligibility redeterminations and marketplace plan renewals for the millions of people who enrolled in a qualified health plan (QHP) through Healthcare.Gov. A companion notice of proposed rulemaking would provide both the federal and state-based marketplaces additional flexibility as their systems evolve and mature.…
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Grace Periods for Failing to Pay Insurance Premiums: What Consumers Need to Know
On July 16, the Obama Administration issued guidance for insurers in the federally facilitated marketplaces (FFMs), clarifying a requirement to provide policyholders receiving premium subsidies with a grace period of up to 90 days if they fail to pay their premiums. How does the grace period work? Under federal rules, insurance companies participating on the FFMs can drop policyholders…
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ACA Days of Summer
By Sandy Ahn, Center on Health Insurance Reforms Ahhh, summer. Baseball. Watermelon. Court decisions on Obamacare. Summer seems to be the season for head scratching court decisions about one of the most politically divisive laws in the last decade, if not the 21st century. It was only two summers ago that the Supreme Court opinion in NFIB v.…
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Seven Steps to Improve Enrollment for the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Community
By Naomi Stark, Georgetown CCF Research Assistant The Affordable Care Act provided an enormous opportunity for coverage of many immigrant and mixed status families eligible for premium tax credits in the health insurance marketplace. However, due to a variety of enrollment barriers, many of those eligible for these critical benefits are unable to enroll. Action for…
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New Report Finds Consumers are Receiving Improved Protections in Individual Market
By the Center on Health Insurance Reforms Staff The Affordable Care Act includes numerous consumer protections designed to remedy shortcomings in the availability, affordability, adequacy, and transparency of individual market insurance. However, because states continue to be the primary regulators of health insurance and implementers of these requirements, consumers are likely to experience some of…
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How Cities Can Reduce the Number of Uninsured Children
By Dawn Schluckebier, National League of Cities After working with 12 cities for the last six months as they developed outreach and enrollment campaigns to increase enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, we are excited to announce that we have selected 8 cities to continue on to the third and final implementation phase of our Cities Expanding Health Access for…
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Real People and a Medicaid Myth
There is a bizarre health care myth that continues to make the rounds without any basis in fact. Those opposed to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act continue to make the false claim that somehow enrolling people in health coverage under Medicaid is bad for an individual’s health and it is much better to…
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MACPAC: Extend CHIP, Address Affordability and Adequacy of Children’s Coverage
Those of us in the child health world know an important topic for the coming year is the future of CHIP and whether funding will be extended beyond September 2015. We at CCF are convinced it is necessary for CHIP to remain strong and stable alongside Medicaid for the foreseeable future to maintain our nation’s…
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Bill to Address Family Glitch Introduced in the Senate
By Joe Touschner The family glitch is well known to many Say Ahhh! readers: Children and spouses of workers are barred from subsidies to purchase health insurance if employer coverage for the worker is deemed affordable and is offered—at any price—to the family. CCF, along with other organizations, encouraged the Treasury Department back in 2011…
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6 Million More Enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in 2014 (and still counting)
CMS released April enrollment numbers for Medicaid and CHIP, showing a net increase in enrollment of over 6 million people. The majority of new enrollees (84%) got coverage in the 26 states and D.C that have embraced the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. Even though Medicaid is open 24/7 year-round, the impact of outreach…
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Updated Medicaid and CHIP Eligibility Thresholds Released
By Martha Heberlein CMS released new MAGI-based eligibility thresholds effective April 1, and plans to release updated eligibility thresholds once a quarter. The idea is to confirm with the states that the FFM is using the correct threshold for assessing/determining eligibility in the states. So each quarter, they’re surveying the states as to what they…
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Making Coverage More Meaningful (Part II): An Update on Progress in Measuring Access to Care in California
By Kristen Golden Testa, The Children’s Partnership, and Mike Odeh, Children Now Our previous post, Making Coverage More Meaningful (Part I): Identifying Challenges in Measuring Access to Care in California described why we have more work to do to make sure that people enrolled in Medi-Cal and Covered California can actually access timely, quality care. In this…
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Making Coverage More Meaningful (Part I): Identifying Challenges in Measuring Access to Care in California
By Kristen Golden Testa, The Children’s Partnership, and Mike Odeh, Children Now As a result of expedited enrollment strategies and incredible outreach during the open enrollment period, millions more Californians have enrolled in affordable health insurance – 1.4 million, including 80,000 children, have enrolled in the Covered California marketplace, and 1.9 million have newly enrolled…
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Fulfilling the ACA’s Promise
There is no doubt that families are much better off than they were before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted. Young adults, the most likely age group to be uninsured, can stay on their family’s health plan. Children with cancer will no longer exceed their annual limit on costs or max out their lifetime…