Marketplace
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Covering Parents is Good for Kids: Treating Depressed Mothers Can Help Children’s Development
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the fourth in a series of blogs on how covering parents helps children. Previous blogs on this topic have pointed out that extending Medicaid coverage to parents will provide a good value to states; maternal, infant and early childhood home visiting programs help prevent child maltreatment; and the single best way…
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Pregnant Women’s Medicaid Eligibility After 2014 – What’s the Minimum?
By Martha Heberlein A great degree of confusion surrounds this question and for good reason. You may be surprised to learn that come January 1, 2014, states must cover pregnant women in Medicaid at either 133% of the FPL OR the income standard in place as of December 19, 1989 (or as of July 1,…
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Waiting for 2014: One Family’s Story
How the ACA’s essential health benefits may help Henry get the health care he needs to grow and thrive. By JoAnn Volk, Georgetown University Center for Health Insurance Reform Losing health care coverage just before your due date is not something you read about in “What to Expect When Expecting.” Who would expect to lose…
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Summaries of Insurance Benefits and Coverage will Help Consumers Comparison Shop
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms As of September 23, the “wild west” of shopping for health insurance coverage has been at least partially tamed, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Consumers can now get standardized, simplified summaries of benefits and coverage (SBC) that will help them understand what’s covered by an…
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ACS Data Shows Country Heading in Right Direction but has Long Way to Go in Bringing Down Uninsured Rate
By Tara Mancini Today’s release of the 2011 estimates of the American Community Survey (ACS) continues the good news on coverage announced in last week’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The national uninsured rate saw a significant decline from 15.5% to 15.1%, with children and young adults likely accounting for much of that decrease (sadly, poverty…
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Tick Tick Tick – Do States Still Have Time to Build New IT Systems?
High-performing, technology-enabled eligibility and enrollment systems are unequivocally at the heart of the vision of streamlined, real-time access to health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). New systems offer the promise of remedying many of the consumer issues that advocates have worked on for years including eliminating unnecessary paperwork, making notices clear and understandable,…
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Uninsured Vets and Their Families Will Benefit from ACA
It was somewhat startling to learn that one in ten veterans are uninsured in the U.S. A report released earlier this summer by the Urban Institute’s Jennifer Haley and Genevieve Kenney (based on 2010 ACS data) found that 1.3 million of the nation’s 12.5 million nonelderly veterans did not have health insurance coverage and weren’t using…
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NAIC – Moving Forward on Consumer Protections in the ACA
By Sabrina Corlette, Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms I have good news for those of us who have been feeling something lacking in our lives lately. You know who you are. You’re deep into ACA implementation but the last few months you’ve felt a void…a sort of emptiness…. You’re just not feeling the…
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Lack of Dental Care Poses Health Risk to Children
By Tara Mancini Dental cavities are the most prevalent chronic disease among children. Many children are not able to obtain the dental care they need due to cost barriers, a shortage of dental health professionals in their area or for other reasons. According to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, as many as 4.6 million…
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Designing Navigator Programs to Meet the Needs of Consumers: Duties and Competencies
Exchanges are required to set up navigator programs and federal regulations specify a minimum set of duties and competencies required of navigators. However, states have to flexibility to expand the role of navigators to maximize the effectiveness and reach of their programs. By identifying and focusing on the needs of consumers upfront, Exchanges are better…
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Federal Policy Makes a Difference in the Lives of Children and Families
As many readers know, this week the annual Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey numbers were released and the number of uninsured persons actually declined for the first time since 2007 – by 1.4 million. Since 2007 the number of uninsured adults has been growing – this year marks the first turnaround. This bit of good…
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Creating a Job Description for Navigators
We’ve posted several blogs over the past year about how navigators will play a critical role in helping consumers connect to expanded and more affordable health coverage options. In July, we launched a new series of briefs about navigators, the first of which, “Countdown to 2014: Designing Navigator Programs to Meet the Needs of Consumers,”…
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More Kids Will Be Connected with Coverage Thanks to ACA
By Lincoln Nehring, Voices for Utah Children The Affordable Care Act reduces the number of eligible, but unenrolled kids in Medicaid and CHIP. Despite what you may have heard, this is a good thing. In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Times, Utah Governor Gary Herbert concedes that the ACA’s now-optional Medicaid expansion is…
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Premiums for Employer-Sponsored Coverage Increase Modestly, but Lower-Income Workers Pay More
By Martha Heberlein The annual Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust survey of employer health benefits was released today and found that the average premium for family based coverage rose to $15,745, or just 4% compared to 2011 (premiums for individual plans rose 3%). Although moderate, this growth has far out-paced workers wages, which…
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CCF and Children’s Dental Health Project Release New Pediatric Dental Benefits Brief
By Joe Touschner As Tara Mancini has observed, more and more of us in the health care world are coming to the stunning realization that the mouth is part of the body. To care for kids’ health properly, we need to give them quality, effective oral health services. The ACA recognizes this: it makes pediatric…
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State of the States: California and Colorado Identify EHB Benchmark
By Max Levin, Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reform On Thursday, August 30, California passed legislation establishing the Kaiser Small Group HMO 30 plan as the state’s essential health benefits benchmark plan. Beyond identifying the state’s benchmark plan, the legislation appears to include a number of important consumer protections by, for example, prohibiting plans from…
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Pediatric Dental Benefits Under the ACA: Issues for State Advocates to Consider
By Joe Touschner The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and the Children’s Dental Health Project collaborated to produce this issue brief. It presents an overview of some of the key changes the Affordable Care Act makes to children’s dental benefits and the choices states face in defining pediatric dental benefits. It concludes with recommendations for those who wish to support…
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Covering Parents: A Solution Child Advocates Can Get Behind
Before the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, we released a paper highlighting the fact that 4.9 million parents stand to gain coverage through Medicaid in 2014. That research became even more significant after the Supreme Court ruling removed an important mechanism for the HHS Secretary to incentivize states to accept federal funds…
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Another ACA Double Win for States and Families: Aligning Medicaid Coverage for Children of All Ages
Imagine you’re a parent with a pre-schooler and a 9 year-old child, earn $20,000 a year (105% FPL) and live in Georgia. Your younger child qualifies for Medicaid coverage but has to renew coverage every six months. Your older child qualifies for CHIP coverage with a monthly premium of $10 but only has to renew…
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State of the States: Choosing an Essential Health Benefits Benchmark
By JoAnn Volk, Center on Health Insurance Reforms To help make coverage more comprehensive, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurers to cover a minimum set of health insurance benefits, known as “essential health benefits.” Consumers are already benefitting from this new protection: beginning in 2010, the ACA prohibits insurers from imposing lifetime or annual…