Medicaid
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Medicaid Expansion Helped Close Coverage Gaps for Pregnant Women, New Study Finds
Medicaid expansion helped close coverage gaps for low-income women in the months before, during and after pregnancy, reducing the number of women who were uninsured during this critical time, new research published this month in Health Affairs found. The authors define “low-income” as a woman whose income is below 138% FPL, the eligibility limit for…
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New 50-State Scorecard Exposes Missed Opportunities to Address Health Equity
Today The Commonwealth Fund released its annual scorecard on state health system performance. The report pulls together 49 indicators of health coverage, spending, quality and outcomes data to rank state health system performance. The accompanying state profiles provide additional context on the rankings, allowing states to get a comprehensive look at each state’s health care…
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Recession And Medicaid Budgets: What Are The Options?
Health Affairs By: Allan Baumgarten and Katherine Hempstead The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic dislocation are having a major impact on state budgets, particularly their Medicaid programs. Medicaid is inherently counter-cyclical, meaning that enrollment and spending increase in response to economic downturns. Medicaid enrollment will grow as workers lose jobs and coverage. Forecasts range from…
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Medicaid Work Requirements in Arkansas Didn’t Boost Employment
The Fiscal Times By: Michael Rainey A new study of work requirements for Medicaid recipients in Arkansas finds that they did nothing to increase employment but did impose substantial hardships on those who lost coverage as a result of the requirements… Joan Alker, a researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families who has…
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As Families Grapple with Schooling Stresses, Congress Must Act
Community Catalyst By: Eva Marie Stahl The Senate is on vacation until next week, having left Washington last month without delivering on the needed support that states and localities urgently require to support families and working people across the country who are living on the edge of financial and health disaster… In a recent survey,…
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Telehealth and Medicaid Expansion during COVID
RAC Monitor By: Knicole C. Emanuel Esq This article will explore Medicaid expansion during COVID-19. We all know that COVID has uprooted our lives. Telehealth is the new post-COVID norm, whereas it was in infancy pre-COVID. Perhaps the pandemic has spurred on Medicaid expansion as well. Everyone has more patients, and more ways to serve…
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Drug Manufacturers May Catch A Break On Medicaid Rebates For Opioid Treatment
Pink Pharma By: Sarah Karlin-Smith CMS believes a new law set to take effect this fall will prohibit Medicaid from collecting rebates on opioid use disorder treatments, Congressional offices and Medicaid stakeholders tell the Pink Sheet. Experts worry this interpretation could open the door for CMS to rule other drugs don’t qualify for rebates. ……
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New Report Underscores Urgent Need for Better Prenatal Health Care in Rural Areas
Earlier this summer, we called attention to the challenges that women in rural communities face during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and new research from Child Trends shows those challenges and health disparities extend to their young children as well. “Health Care Access for Infants and Toddlers in Rural Areas” found that rural infant and…
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Allowing Pharmacists to Give Childhood Immunizations Undermines the Continuity of Care Provided by Pediatricians
This week, HHS announced that it will allow pharmacists to vaccinate children ages 3-18, superseding state laws to the contrary. On the surface, expanding access to childhood vaccinations may seem like a good move but not so fast. While the evidence is clear that childhood immunization rates have declined since the COVID pandemic hit, allowing…
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KFF Brief Points to Need for Greater Investment in Consumer Assistance to Connect People to Health Coverage
This week, I’m reading findings from a new Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) brief about who uses consumer assistance programs established under the Affordable Care Act, who does and does not get help, why they seek assistance, and the difference the programs can make in consumers’ ability to obtain health coverage. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Consumer Assistance…
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Families with Young Children Need More Support During COVID-19, Surveys Show
Since April, the researchers at University of Oregon’s Center for Translational Neuroscience have been conducting a weekly national survey of households with children age 5 and under and the findings are clear: families with young children are stressed, and they’re increasingly facing hunger and unemployment. These challenges, the authors write, are, “negatively affecting caregiver well-being,…
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Major U.S. Health Insurers Report Big Profits, Benefiting From the Pandemic
New York Times By: Reed Abelson The nation’s leading health insurers are experiencing an embarrassment of profits. Some of the largest companies, including Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, are reporting second-quarter earnings that are double what they were a year ago. And while insurance profits are capped under the Affordable Care Act, with the requirement…
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Missouri Voters Latest To Approve Medicaid Expansion
Politico By: Rachel Roubein Missouri voters on Tuesday approved Medicaid expansion to many of the state’s poorest adults, making their conservative state the second to join the Obamacare program through the ballot during the pandemic.The Missouri ballot measure expands Medicaid to about 230,000 low-income residents at a time when the state’s safety net health care…
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Millions Of Children Have Lost Their Health Insurance—What’s Our Plan?
Health Affairs By: Doug Strane The COVID-19 pandemic has constrained the economy in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only a few months ago. After years of economic expansion, unemployment reached 11.1 percent in June… Together these programs already insure nearly 40 percent of all children, and they will require both short-term buttressing…
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Keeping Kids Connected to Care During COVID-19
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) have teamed up to protect children’s health and well-being with the launch of a joint project: “Keeping Kids Connected to Care During COVID-19 and Beyond”. AAP and CCF are working with Manatt Health, Family Voices and a network of children’s…
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Missouri Voters Approve Medicaid Expansion
Missouri voters joined 38 other states (including DC) and adopted Medicaid expansion yesterday by a vote of 53% to 47%. The vote gave Missouri the distinction of being the sixth state to pass Medicaid expansion by a ballot vote, usually over the objections of Republican leadership in each state. The vote followed a familiar rural/urban…
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Medicaid Managed Care Transparency: Another Leap Forward
Last October, transparency in Medicaid managed care took a leap forward with the publication of a path-breaking study by Dr. Andrew Bindman and his colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco. The researchers examined the performance of individual managed care organizations (MCOs) participating in the state’s Medicaid program with respect to quality of…
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Parsing Medicaid Expansion in Missouri
Flatland By: Tammy Worth On Tuesday, voters in Missouri will decide if the state will become the 38th in the country to expand its Medicaid program. The expansion could cover more than 200,000 Missourians currently ineligible for the program, a majority of whom are working adults… Expansion states have seen a 50% reduction in infant…
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Question Of Medicaid Expansion Headed To Missouri Voters, Despite Republican Pushback
NPR By: Cara Anthony Haley Organ thought she had everything figured out. After graduating from a small private college just outside Boston, she earned her master’s degree, entered the workforce and eventually landed a corporate job here as a data analyst… Amid the pandemic, Medicaid already appears to be helping people newly out of work.…
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The COVID-19 Downturn Triggers Jump in Medicaid Enrollment
Kaiser Health News By: Phil Galewitz Reversing a three-year decline, the number of people covered by Medicaid nationwide rose markedly this spring as the impact of the recession caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 began to take hold…Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said…
