Marketplace
-
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…
-
Good News for Utah’s Children: CMS Upholds Key Affordability and Benefit Protections
By Lincoln Nehring, Voices for Utah Children In 2011 Utah passed SB 180, Medicaid Reform. As with many Medicaid reform efforts happening across the country, SB 180’s broad theme was good: control costs through improved care management and quality. However, also like many Medicaid reform efforts happening around the country, Utah’s “improved quality” theme came…
-
President’s Budget Meets with Predictable Response in Unpredictable Year
By Jocelyn Guyer With the release of the President’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal yesterday, CCF staff have begun the annual ritual of digging through lengthy documents and tables to untangle what it might mean for the health care coverage of children and families. It is a challenging task in the best of times, but…
-
Medicaid Growth Slows; Medicaid Directors’ Innovative Efforts Expand
By Tara Mancini Overall, the economic conditions surrounding state Medicaid budgets are continuing to improve, even as states make their way through the first full budget year after the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act enhanced FMAP funding expired. In January 2012, unemployment hit a three year low of 8.3 percent, down from 9.4 percent a…
-
Once Again We Look Into the Massachusetts Crystal Ball
By Jocelyn Guyer While we’ve all heard how successful Massachusetts has been in covering kids, a study out in the new edition of the journal Health Affairs looks at the success of health reform for adults in the state. Some highlights: * 94.2% of non-elderly adults had coverage in 2010, compared to 86.6% in 2006 and 77.7%…
-
HHS Issues New Rules Requiring Insurers to use Plain Language to Help Consumers Compare Insurance Plans
Have you ever had to shop for insurance on your own and faced a bewildering array of options? With insurance companies peppering their plan descriptions with technical language and legalese, so you’re not quite sure what’s really covered? Or even worse, have you ever thought you were buying a good policy only to find out…
-
Is Your State Reviewing Potential EHB Benchmarks?
By Joe Touschner HHS’s essential health benefits bulletin is less than two months old–in fact, the comment period just closed this week, click here for our comment letter–but some states are already planning for what it could mean for their residents. The Bulletin indicates that states will be able to choose the core of their…
-
The Pace of Progress in the States
By Martha Heberlein As legislative sessions are kicking off, it will be interesting to see which states take steps towards implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) this year. A new report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows that those states that have been moving most slowly on reform are also the…
-
HHS Shares Info on Small Group Plans
By Joe Touschner It’s a busy month on the essential health benefits front! As we’ve noted, one option for states under the proposed approach for state-defined EHB packages is to use one of the state’s three largest small group plans as a benchmark. It’s been difficult to evaluate this proposal because we didn’t know which…
-
CCF Shares Comments on the Essential Health Benefits Bulletin
By Joe Touschner We have been offering our insights on essential health benefits through a series of blog posts. This post is to alert you that Georgetown CCF has drafted a letter in response to the Bulletin issued by HHS in December. We raise a number of concerns with the Bulletin’s approach to essential health…
-
Secrets to Success: Four States at the Forefront of Children’s Health Coverage Gains
By Jocelyn Guyer There are people in my family who think I am unduly obsessed with Tom Brady. They might even accuse me of co-authoring a paper on states at the forefront of covering our nation’s children that features Massachusetts just so I could say “Just as Tom Brady is in a league of his…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Medicaid Constitutional Challenge Based on ‘More Rhetoric Than Fact”
We haven’t heard much about what Politico has dubbed the “sleeper issue” of the Supreme Court case because it is the least likely to be found unconstitutional. This week, Attorney Paul Clement tried to stoke a little life into the sleeper issue by tying it to the more controversial mandate provision. In the brief he filed…
-
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,…
-
Essential Health Benefits: A Child’s Perspective
As soon as rumors started flying about what would be in the essential health benefits guidelines I thought hmmmm that sounds a lot like CHIP. At first blush the new guidance does sound like the CHIP model – indeed the guidance says as much (p. 8). But as HHS officials and others have pointed out,…
-
HHS Suggests States Will Have Choices on Essential Health Benefits
By Joe Touschner For nearly a year now, we’ve been tracking the process of defining the essential health benefits. The EHB package will define the minimum set of benefits to be covered by insurance plans in the individual and small group markets as well as benchmark Medicaid plans and Basic Health Programs. On Friday afternoon,…
-
Improving Coverage for Children Under Health Reform Will Require Maintaining Current Eligibility Standards For Medicaid and CHIP
When the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is fully implemented, it will extend health insurance coverage to many adult Americans who currently lack it. It is not known, however, how the health reform legislation will affect children and parents who would otherwise be uninsured. Based on this analysis, health reform has the potential to cut…
-
ACA Should Bring Insured Rate for Children Up to 95%
Ever since the Affordable Care Act passed, people have been calling us to ask “What does the law mean for kids and their families?” To my great dismay, we were completely unable to answer this question even though we are, after all, the “Center for Children and Families.” The only thing we could accurately say…