Medicaid
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A Parting Gift for the Incoming Administration: “Good Guidance Practices”
This week—two weeks before the inauguration of a new President—the self-proclaimed “Good Guidance Practices” regulation issued by the outgoing Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) takes effect. As proposed in August, the regulation was not so good for Medicaid and CHIP. In its final form, published on December 7, the regulation…
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Study on Intergenerational Health Mobility Provides Strong Case for Early Childhood Interventions
Examining how children’s health compares to the health of their parents can offer valuable insight into the individual, family, and community-level factors that affect a child’s health status. This is the aim of a new Health Affairs article from Jason Fletcher and Katie Jajtner at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which seeks to bring an intergenerational…
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Medicaid Managed Care Covid-19 Advocacy Action Guide
Georgetown University CCF partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to produce a Medicaid Managed Care COVID-19 Advocacy Action Guide. The guide explains how practitioners and child health advocates can work with MCOs and state policymakers to increase financial support for pediatric and primary care practices serving children and families enrolled in Medicaid. The…
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Advocacy Guide Outlines Strategies for Supporting Primary Care Practitioners in Medicaid Managed Care Networks During Pandemic
The pandemic has not been good for children or their physicians. Well-child and other non-emergency visits are down, so children are missing important screening benchmarks as well as immunizations. Pediatric practitioners who are paid on a fee-for-service basis have seen their revenues fall and the financial stability of their practices imperiled. The situation has improved…
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Medicaid Managed Care: The Case for Transparency in the Biden Administration
On the way out the door, CMS Administrator Seema Verma issued changes to Medicaid managed care regulations that, among other things, weaken the standards for measuring the adequacy of managed care organization (MCO) provider networks. These changes, which will be effective December 14, were adopted over the objections of CCF and other beneficiary advocates. They…
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New CCF-Commonwealth Fund Report Highlights Long-Term Benefits of Medicaid Coverage for Pregnant Women and Children
A new report written by my colleagues Edwin Park, Allie Corcoran and I for the Commonwealth Fund examines and summarizes the growing body of research documenting the long-term benefits of Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women and children. Because Medicaid/CHIP expansions were phased in over time, and states reacted on different timetables to federal options and requirements,…
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Medicaid Managed Care Transparency: Advocacy Around External Quality Review Reports
As anyone who cares about children’s health knows, it is important to know how Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) are performing for the children enrolled in their plans. Access to quality data on a plan-specific basis is a vital part of determining which plans are doing the job well and which plans are falling short.…
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Can a Biden Administration Reverse the Rise in Uninsured Children?
A few weeks ago I blogged about how a Biden Administration could go about unwinding Medicaid Section 1115 work reporting requirement waivers. Since Section 1115 demonstrations are clearly in the purview of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a Biden Administration is in the driver’s seat (within the confines of the statute of course!)…
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“Improper Payment” Rates for 2020: Another Year, Another Attempt to Tarnish the Popular Medicaid Program
$100 billion—with a “b”—is a large number. So when the headline on the op-ed in the New York Post screams “Medicaid hemorrhaging $100B on Americans ineligible for the program” most readers will understandably frown and think: “This doesn’t sound good, even in a pandemic. What’s going on here?” The author, Brian Blase, is not a…
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Medicaid Expansion Increased Preventive Care for Pregnant and Postpartum Women, New Study Finds
Medicaid expansion increased the use of key preventive health services by women before and after pregnancy, a new study published in Health Affairs found. The findings add to the evidence that expanding Medicaid coverage to all low-income adults does translate into more utilization of preventive care that can improve the health and wellbeing of women…
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HIV and Medicaid Expansion: Failure of Southern States to Expand Medicaid Makes Elimination of HIV Infection in the United States Much Harder to Achieve
By Adam Searing, JD, MPH and Adaora A. Adimora, MD, MPH Introduction Advances in public health programs and medical treatment mean HIV can be treated successfully in the long term, improving the health of individuals and reducing the spread of the virus. While the federal government has multiple initiatives aimed at addressing and eventually eliminating…
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Medicaid Managed Care Procurement: Opportunity for Transparency?
In most states, the responsibility for ensuring that children enrolled in Medicaid receive needed services rests with managed care organizations (MCOs). They are stewards for millions of children and billions of Medicaid funding intended to meet children’s health care needs. Yet there is little transparency about how individual MCOs are performing for children. The logical…
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What Can We Expect from Biden Administration on Work Reporting Requirement Waivers?
As I was waiting to watch Vice President-elect Kamala Harris start her speech on Saturday night, I tweeted the following: Goodbye and good riddance to Medicaid work requirement waivers. — Joan Alker (@JoanAlker1) November 8, 2020 It proved to be a popular sentiment – at least on my twitter feed. As we have blogged about…
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What the Proposed “SUNSET” Regulation Means for Medicaid and CHIP
On November 4, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed to require itself to review almost every regulation it has ever issued, including those affecting Medicaid and CHIP. It did so by proposing a new regulation, which has the misleading acronym “SUNSET” (Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely). A more appropriate acronym would…
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Medicaid and CHIP Coverage for Pregnant Women: Federal Requirements, State Options
Introduction Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are key supports for pregnant women and new mothers, as well as their children in the critical early years of life. Medicaid pays for nearly half of all births in the United States, including a greater share of births in rural areas, among young women, and…
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States Can Do More to Improve Medicaid and CHIP Pregnancy and Postpartum Coverage, Advance Maternal and Child Health Equity
Each year, Medicaid pays for nearly half of all births in the United States, including a greater share of births in rural areas, among young women, and women of color. Medicaid and CHIP also cover close to half of the nation’s children under age 3, making it the largest source of coverage for infants and…
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Postpartum Depression Can Persist Well Beyond a Child’s First Birthday – Medicaid Should Adjust Accordingly
Postpartum depression can last up to three years, new research from the National Institute of Health has found, and symptoms can often emerge well after the first months following delivery and get worse over time. The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, suggest that providers, particularly pediatricians, should screen new mothers for depression through at…
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New CMS Rule Would Weaken Families First Continuous Coverage Protection in Medicaid
On October 28, the Trump Administration announced that it would weaken the current continuous coverage protection for Medicaid beneficiaries by permitting states to cut or scale back benefits and increase cost-sharing charges. The Families First COVID-19 relief legislation provided a temporary 6.2 percentage point increase in the federal Medicaid matching rate (FMAP) through the end…
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Medicaid Managed Care Companies Report Solid Earnings While States and Pediatricians Struggle
Q3 2020 closed on September 30, and publicly held companies have reported their financial performance. These reports, known as Form 10-Qs, are designed to provide investors with some transparency about the companies in which they are investing. Here’s what they tell us about how the five companies with the largest Medicaid managed care enrollments have…
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Georgia’s Medicaid Waiver is Fiscally Foolish and Anti-Family
On October 15th, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma traveled to Atlanta to announce the approval of Georgia’s “Pathways to Coverage” Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration. The approval is the latest in CMS Administrator Verma’s ideological crusade to “reframe” Medicaid and promote her signature initiative — work requirements. The creation of a…
