Medicaid
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MACPAC Explores Why Few Providers Sought Medicaid, CHIP Relief
Inside Health Policy By: Michelle Stein Congress’ Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program advisers want to look deeper into how Medicaid provider relief efforts are going, after finding that less than 15% of potentially eligible providers applied for Medicaid relief funding by the end of August. As of mid-September, only $2.2 billion of the $15…
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Experts seek answers on why few Medicaid providers sought COVID-19 relief
Healthcare Dive By: Samantha Liss Commissioners that help guide federal Medicaid policy raised concerns Thursday over why few Medicaid providers applied for federal relief funds amid the pandemic. Of the $175 billion allocated by Congress to help providers, about $15 billion has been allocated for Medicaid providers specifically. However, despite the billions in relief available,…
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Not All Seniors To Get $200 Medicare Drug Cards Before Election
Inside Health Policy By: John Wilkerson Only some seniors will receive the president’s $200 Medicare Part D cards for copays before the election because it will take months to issue the cards, White House officials said Friday (Sept. 25). Officials declined to say how the cards would be paid for, but on a call with…
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State-imported drugs would not affect 340B drug prices
Modern Healthcare By: Rachel Cohrs Drugs imported by states under the Trump administration’s importation plan will not be subject to Medicaid rebates, which means they would not set new 340B prices according to CMS guidance released Friday… The savings from drug importation would hinge on how low states could get drug prices and how widely…
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Covid Causes Vast Drop in Critical Early Child Care for Poor
Bloomberg Quint The Covid-19 pandemic is harming the long-term health of low-income children, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Wednesday. Vaccination rates, primary preventive care, and screenings among children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program have plummeted during the pandemic, the CMS said. Between March and May, vaccinations for children under…
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Number of uninsured Arizonans grew by 60K last year, report says. And then the pandemic hit.
AZ Central By: Stephanie Innes The number of Arizonans without health insurance grew by nearly 64,000 people in 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic that may swell those ranks, new Census data says… In her blog post, Joan Alker of Georgetown University wrote that Latino children saw the largest jump in their already high uninsured…
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Florida health care providers get reprieve from devastating’ proposal
Biz Journal Verma unveiled the proposed rule in November, saying at the time there had been a proliferation of supplemental payment arrangements “where shady recycling schemes drive up taxpayer costs and pervert the system.” The rule drew widespread criticism from disparate interests. Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown…
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Trump administration backing off Medicaid rule that states warned would lead to cuts
The Hill By: Jessie Hellmann The Trump administration will not move forward with a proposed Medicaid rule that states, hospitals, insurers, patient advocates and members of both political parties warned could lead to massive cuts to the federal health care program for the poor… If finalized, the rule “would have forced states to face larger…
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California Rx: State May Dive Into Generic Drug Market
Kaiser Health News By: Angela Hart and Samantha Young California is poised to become the first state to develop its own line of generic drugs, targeting soaring drug prices and stepping into a fiercely competitive drug market dominated by deep-pocketed pharmaceutical companies… “Other legislative efforts in Congress and in other states have focused on government…
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ACA Improved Health Care Access and Affordability for New Mothers, Report Finds
We often get asked whether increases in health coverage rates result in more people getting care. In the case of new mothers following the implementation of the ACA’s major coverage provisions in 2014, a recent report from the Urban Institute shows the answer for this group is yes. In the years following the 2014 coverage…
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Another Sign that We Can Do Better in Covering Children Who are Eligible but Not Enrolled in Medicaid
A new report from the Urban Institute finds that participation of uninsured children in Medicaid and CHIP stalled in 2018. While this analysis lags behind the latest data (2019) on health insurance status released by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey last month, it continues to show the direct correlation between the child insurance rate…
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Secretary Azar Extends Public Health Emergency Medicaid Protections for Beneficiaries and States
[Editor’s Note: For more up-to-date developments on the status of the public health emergency read CCF’s latest blog post on this topic.] On Friday HHS Secretary Azar renewed his declaration of a public health emergency (PHE) due to the coronavirus pandemic. The renewal is effective October 23, when the previous 90-day renewal would have expired,…
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House Passes Bill to Give States Option to Extend Postpartum Medicaid Coverage to New Moms
Medicaid and CHIP cover nearly half of all births each year and have critical roles to play to ensure access to postpartum care that supports the lifelong health of mother and baby together. The Helping MOMS Act, passed with a bipartisan majority voice vote in the U.S. House of Representatives this week, would give states…
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CMS Releases New Data on Decline in Pediatric Visits and Vaccination Rates with No Plan to Improve Care for Kids
CMS recently released a report on service use among children with Medicaid and CHIP during COVID-19. Perhaps the most newsworthy aspect of the report is that the data therein come from the much beleaguered Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) that my colleague, Tricia Brooks, has been following since CMS announced it in 2013. The…
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HHS “Good Guidance” Rule: Not so Good for Medicaid and CHIP
The Centers for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) recently issued a letter to State Medicaid Directors laying out ways in which state Medicaid agencies can advance value-based care. The 33-page SMD includes numerous references to requirements that states must meet if they want to implement VBP approaches, such as “states must have claims systems that…
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More Evidence Medicaid Work Requirements Don’t Actually Work
A new study from Ben Sommers and other researchers at Harvard University finds that Medicaid work requirements fail to promote employment but do result in more people losing their health coverage and may promote other negative health outcomes. The study, published in Health Affairs, found that negative economic consequences ensued as well – with medical…
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Proposed “Good Guidance” Regulations
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families submitted the following comments to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the proposed Good Guidance Practices regulations. CCF_good_guidance_comments-1
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Census Data Show Largest Annual Increase in Number of Uninsured Children in More Than a Decade
Despite the strength of the pre-pandemic economy in 2019, the number of uninsured children grew at an alarming rate according to newly released data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS data released today documents the largest annual increase in the number of uninsured kids from 2018 to 2019 since the survey…
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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…
