Marketplace
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Medicaid Access: Increased Demand for Primary Care Providers Will Vary Across Country
By Tara Mancini See CCF’s latest fact sheet on Medicaid Access Earlier this week, my colleague, Joan Alker, blogged about how Medicaid provides access to needed care. As she mentioned, the decision to extend Medicaid coverage to millions of the uninsured has often been met with skepticism over whether the health care system has the…
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Final Essential Health Benefits Rule Unveiled
By Joe Touschner It’s been a long process involving an in-depth study, state choices, and stakeholder comment on multiple rounds of proposals from HHS, but we now have the final essential health benefits rule. Along with it came final rules on actuarial value for QHPs and cost-sharing limits in many types of private health coverage.…
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Most Important Issues for Children in the New Proposed Rule on Medicaid, CHIP and Exchanges
By Jocelyn Guyer After an intensive few weeks spent lugging around binders filled with the latest proposed rule on Medicaid and CHIP, we’ve finally done it! Here is our very best shot at a concise(ish) list of the top issues of concern for kids in the proposed rule. Comments are due this Thursday and, if…
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Assister Types Abound: Seven Steps to Strengthen Certified Application Counselor Programs
If you read the first blog in this series, you know we’re excited about the new Certified Application Counselor program because it builds on the existing and immensely effective infrastructure of community-based application assistance in many states. Here are seven ways to strengthen the proposed CAC program rules to better protect and meet the needs…
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Assister Types Abound: Introducing the Certified Application Counselor
Using community-based organizations, including community health centers and hospitals, to assist with Medicaid and CHIP enrollment has been a core element of successful state strategies in maximizing children’s health coverage over the years. Based on the latest 50-state survey on Medicaid and CHIP eligibility and enrollment, 23 states provided funding to these key community partners…
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Diabetes No Longer Impediment to Daughter’s Future Thanks to Affordable Care Act
By JoAnn Volk, Center on Health Insurance Reforms (Veronica of Charlotte, North Carolina, was diagnosed with diabetes at age 8. She is pictured here with her mother Nikki.) Health, happiness and success are three of the most common wishes parents have for their children’s future. That is why it is so devastating when a child…
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Proposed Rules Shed Light on Individual Mandate Exceptions
By Joe Touschner and Tara Mancini As highlighted in the Supreme Court case, we all know that the Affordable Care Act includes a tax on those who choose not to maintain health insurance coverage starting next year. New rules from the federal government spell out just who will face that tax—and more importantly, who won’t.…
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The Goldilocks Plan: Getting Benefit Design “Just Right” for Insurance Exchanges
Yesterday, the journal Health Affairs has published an article I co-wrote with CHIR colleague Christine Monahan and colleagues Dave Downs and Barbara Yondorf, both affiliated with Engaged Public in Denver, Colorado. In it, we examine a policy conundrum for health exchange planners. On one hand, politicians and policymakers have promised consumers that the new exchanges…
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Final Treasury Rule Contains Family Penalty
By Joe Touschner In a move that will keep many children out of subsidized exchange coverage, the Department of Treasury today released a final rule that includes the “family penalty” in the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits. (Note that this problem is also frequently referred to as the “family glitch” or “firewall”). We’ve been…
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Why Should Health Insurance Exchanges Drive Higher-Quality Health Care?
By Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Do you remember the last time you had a headache and your doctor used leeches to restore you to good health? Fortunately, neither do I. That’s because the practice of bloodletting – the most common surgical procedure for almost two thousand years because it was thought to improve health…
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Getting Into Gear for 2014: Findings from a 50-State Survey of Eligibility, Enrollment, Renewal, and Cost-Sharing Policies in Medicaid and CHIP, 2012-2013
As 2013 begins, implementation of the major provisions of the ACA, including its coverage expansions, is less than a year away. Following the Supreme Court ruling to uphold the ACA and the 2012 elections, efforts to prepare for 2014 are moving into high gear in many states. The majority of states are capitalizing on web-based…
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How Will Families Fare with the Workplace Wellness Rule?
By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms Improving one’s health usually makes the top ten list for New Year’s resolutions so as we all hit that make or break time on our personal resolutions, let’s take a moment to focus on the proposed workplace wellness rules. The Departments of Health and Human…
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HHS Launches Exchange Outreach Efforts & Opens the ‘Health Insurance Marketplace’
Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms This week, the Department of Health and Human Services began a major push to educate the public about the new health insurance options available to them under the Affordable Care Act, including the newly-named Health Insurance Marketplace (formerly known as the “Federally Facilitated Exchange.”) With just under nine months to…
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CHIP Waiting Periods Make No Sense When Families Are Penalized for Not Having Coverage
The latest round of proposed Medicaid regulations has a number of helpful provisions but we couldn’t help be disappointed that the proposed rules allow states to continue to impose CHIP waiting periods on children who have recently been covered by group health insurance. Simply put…waiting periods make no sense in a post-ACA universe in which…
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HHS Sheds Light on How Family Income Will be Calculated Under New MAGI Method for Medicaid and CHIP
By Jocelyn Guyer Over the holidays, while we were all relaxing with family and friends (or sneaking off for fiscal cliff updates), HHS issued an important “Dear State Medicaid Director” letter that will help to determine the income levels for children’s coverage under Medicaid and CHIP for at least the next six years. Not quite…
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Health Insurance Reform Under the Fiscal Cliff Agreement – Mostly Left Untouched
By Sabrina Corlette, Center on Health Insurance Reforms The health insurance reform provisions of the Affordable Care Act were mostly left untouched under the recently passed budget agreement to avert the fiscal cliff, with one exception. The bill rescinds the remaining, unobligated funding in the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP) program, ending new grants and loans…
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Happy 2013! Express Lane and Family Health Information Centers Ring in the New Year
We are confident that Say Ahhh! readers received dozens of smartphone alerts and emails the past few days with minute-by-minute updates on the fiscal cliff deal making. Yet those alerts missed some important Medicaid- and CHIP-related provisions that rose to the top of our “Breaking News” list: Express Lane Eligibility option extended until September 30,…
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State Trends: Per Person Costs of Private Insurance Rising Faster than Per Person Medicare Spending
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund analyzes state trends in private employer-sponsored insurance from 2003 to 2011 for the under-65 population. Right now there is a lot of attention on the federal deficit and Medicare. What is not receiving a lot of attention is that the costs of private insurance spending per person have…
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Essential Health Benefit and Market Reform Rules Comments Are Due December 26th – CCF Shares Draft Comments
By Joe Touschner In my last post on HHS’s proposed rules, I mentioned that, like the holidays, the comment deadline would be here before we knew it. Well here we are in the middle of the holiday season and the December 26 deadline is right around the corner. It’s likely not something that was on…
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Green Light Comes Early for Six Health Insurance Exchanges
By Sarah Dash, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reform On Monday, December 10th, the Department of Health and Human Services granted conditional approval to six states seeking to establish state-based health insurance exchanges: Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. The decisions came earlier than the January 1, 2013, statutory deadline for HHS to…