Marketplace
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National League of Cities Awards 12 Cities Planning Grants for Health Benefit Outreach Campaign
By Wesley Prater As part of the NLC’s Cities Expanding Health Care Access for Children and Families Initiative, funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies, 12 cities recently were awarded planning grants up to $30,000 to develop citywide outreach campaigns, focused on enrolling eligible children and families in Medicaid and CHIP. During a six-month planning period, the…
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Handling Premiums with Care in Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace
In my former life as a CHIP director, I came to appreciate how tough it is for low-income families to make ends meet. In the hierarchy of needs, I think we all agree that paying the rent and utilities, putting food on the table, and making sure you can show up for work by having…
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Extending Medicaid: Good for Parents, Great For Kids! Here’s Why
One of the best state approaches for covering the remaining low-income uninsured children is to put out the welcome mat for the whole family by extending Medicaid coverage for parents. While most low-income kids are currently eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, they continue to be disproportionately uninsured: in 2012, they were 45.1 percent of the…
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State Decisions on Health Insurance Policy Cancellations Fix
Under the Administration’s transitional policy fix for people whose health insurance plans were canceled, states and insurers are encouraged, but not required, to allow people to re-enroll in and even renew these plans. This means that health plans that exist today, but do not comply with the Affordable Care Act’s new protections set to go into effect…
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One Step Closer to the Basic Health Program
While many of us have our focus on health coverage that begins on January 1, 2014, I am also keeping my eye on a new option for states to provide more affordable coverage to low-income parents and other adults that starts on January 1, 2015. Right before Thanksgiving, we filed comments on the Basic Health…
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New Resource for Assisters Covers Private Insurance and Market Plans
Almost two months into open enrollment for the new Health Insurance Marketplaces, it is clear consumer assistance is essential to helping people understand their coverage options. Fortunately, the ACA anticipated this need by requiring the marketplaces to have Navigators who will help consumers compare options and enroll in coverage. The Administration and states are also…
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Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum Joins CCF to Champion Children’s Coverage
By Priscilla Huang, Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum I had the opportunity to join health policy experts from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a panel discussion today hosted by New American Media, discussing encouraging findings in CCF’s latest report on the status of…
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Ready, Set to Enroll? Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment on the Cusp of 2014
By Martha Heberlein and Tricia Brooks Of late, most of the media attention on ACA implementation has focused on the technical glitches in the federal (and to a lesser extent state) marketplaces and the end of inadequate individual insurance plans, while state Medicaid agencies have been hard at work behind the scenes revamping their business…
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Pitching in to Connect the 5.3 Million Uninsured Children with Coverage
Yesterday we released our annual report on uninsured children. While childhood poverty remains high, we were happy to report that Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped drive the uninsured rate for children down to record lows. While we celebrate the success of all the community leaders, children’s health advocates, state and…
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My Take on the HHS Enrollment Numbers
As we like to say here inside the Beltway, its all about your baseline… So I am actually somewhat pleasantly surprised by the numbers HHS just released. I had very low expectations like everyone else. What seems encouraging to me is the level of interest – between the state and federal marketplace websites there have…
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CHIP’S Start: Early Lessons for Health Reform
By Matt Broaddus, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Administration is expected to issue estimates this week of enrollment since October 1 in health reform’s Medicaid expansion and its new health insurance marketplaces — and some media have already reported that the numbers did not meet Administration expectations. But, as we’ve learned by examining the early experience with…
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Beware of Rush to Judgment Based on Early Enrollment Numbers
As we await the first set of marketplace enrollment numbers from HHS, we need to maintain perspective. The Medicare Part D experience tells us that enrolling for a new health benefit is not something you expect to do quickly. As of the equivalent first month report in the fall of 2005, 10 percent of those…
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Small Business and the ACA: Survey Debunks Opponents Claims
Small employers are often portrayed in the media as down on the Affordable Care Act, anxious that it will raise their costs and expose them to greater regulation. And opponents of the law like to claim that it will “kill jobs” and cause people to lose the coverage they have. Of course, providing health insurance…
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Medicaid Enrollment is Up – as Expected
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Media reports have expressed surprise, even concern, that early enrollment in Medicaid under health reform has outpaced enrollment in the new health insurance marketplaces so far. But, that was expected to happen, even before the well-documented technical problems affecting HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace website. The fact is, the…
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Helping Consumers Understand Their Coverage Options from Coast to Coast
By Sarah Dash, Kevin Lucia, and Justin Giovannelli of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms To help consumers enroll in the recently opened health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act created outreach and consumer assistance positions such as “navigators,” in-person assisters, and certified application counselors. Although awareness of the marketplaces and the financial help they may offer has…
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And Another Thing (or two) On Inaccurate Reporting About Medicaid and the ACA …
Perhaps the most egregious error I have seen in recent reporting on Medicaid enrollment and this ACA is from a recent report in CBS News. A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that…
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Reality Check: Interest in New Coverage Options and Support for Medicaid Expansion Strong
Amidst all the noise, a new Commonwealth Fund survey provides a helpful reality check that focuses our attention back where it should be: on actual uninsured Americans and how they are approaching the new coverage options available to them. This information is super-current and comes directly from a survey of Americans and not from state…
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Strong Medicaid Enrollment So Far No Surprise to Me
I was going to write this blog earlier in the week but got waylaid by meetings, meetings and more meetings! Today I wake up and see a front-page story in the Washington Post: Medicaid Tops Private Plans in Tallies of New Sign-Ups. It’s not very often that you see a front page story on Medicaid…
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New Guidance on Individual Mandate: New Hardship Exemption for Those Who Enroll at the End of the Initial Enrollment Period
By Tara Mancini While open enrollment for Marketplace plans extends to March 31, 2014, there’s been some concern that an earlier date—February 15—marked the deadline for those without coverage to sign up to avoid tax penalties for going without insurance. On Monday, CMS released additional guidance on the ACA’s individual shared responsibility requirement to address…
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Under Pressure: An Update on Restrictive State Insurance Marketplace Consumer Assistance Laws
By Justin Giovanelli, Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms To help consumers enroll in the recently opened health insurance marketplaces, the Affordable Care Act created outreach and consumer assistance positions such as “navigators,” in-person assisters, and certified application counselors. Though they are subject to uniform federal standards, in practice, these programs range widely from…