Medicaid
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CCF Comments on Mental Health Parity Requirements (CMS-2333-P)
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families submitted the following comments to CMS regarding the proposed rule to update mental health parity requirements (“Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Programs; Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008; the Application of Mental Health Parity Requirements to Coverage Offered by Medicaid Managed Care Organizations, the Children’s Health…
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Florida House Votes Down Senate Medicaid Plan Leaving Florida with Large Coverage Gap
Today the Florida House voted down the Senate’s Florida Health Insurance Affordability Exchange plan that would have accepted federal Medicaid funds. The House’s rejection of the Senate plan follows a strong bipartisan vote in that chamber in favor earlier this week of 33-3. Both chambers have large Republican majorities. An estimated 669,000 Floridians will remain…
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Medicaid: A Sound Investment for Kids, Their Families and Their Futures
While our attention has been necessarily focused on extending CHIP funding (and working on the best ways to take advantage of the funding boost that came with it), Congress is engaged in another exercise that demands the attention of children’s health advocates. As in recent years, Medicaid is on the chopping block during budget negotiations,…
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Broad Wisconsin Budget Coalition Backs BadgerCare Expansion
By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Coalition on Children and Families Sooner or later, Wisconsin is going to expand its Medicaid coverage, known as “BadgerCare,” to include all adults up to 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL). The strong public support for expanding coverage and the substantial financial benefits of accepting increased federal funding will eventually…
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Sustained Outreach is a Key to Success in Connecting Uninsured Kids to Coverage
Medicaid and CHIP have been instrumental in driving the uninsured rate for children to all time low. In recent years, however, this progress has stalled nationally and even reversed in some states. It’s no secret that sustained outreach is key to success in connecting uninsured kids to coverage. So we were particularly pleased that Congress…
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Florida’s LIP Medicaid Waiver Amendment Now Open for Public Comment – National Implications
It’s hard to miss the ongoing debate about Florida’s Medicaid expansion and the related subject of how the federal government plans to respond to the state’s request for continued funding of its Low Income Pool. But it would be easy to miss that the federal government just opened that amendment up for public comment. As…
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Medicaid Managed Care Regs Released – Let the Reading Begin
While we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when CMS did not release the Medicaid and CHIP Managed Care proposed rules prior to the Memorial Day weekend, we have our work cut out for us the next few weeks (months) as CMS released 653 pages of proposed rules late yesterday. Organizations have until July 27th…
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Obama Administration Announces Cuts to Florida’s Special LIP Dollars
In the latest development in Florida’s Medicaid saga, yesterday CMS gave a preliminary response to Florida’s Low Income Pool request. Adhering to the principles outlined in an April 14 letter, CMS indicated that it plans to cut LIP substantially by 55% for the state’s next fiscal year and 75% in the following year – the…
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Celebrate or Condemn Enrollment Success? Affordable Care Act Critics Can’t Decide
Health care policy debates can often be confusing but the rapidly shifting positions in the latest tempest on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are harder to follow than a ping-pong ball. For background one has to travel back to 2013 as major glitches in the healthcare.gov website were adversely affecting initial enrollment in the…
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New Study Confirms Importance of Medicaid/CHIP Maintenance of Effort
During the debate on CHIP, conversations focused a lot on what would happen to kids’ coverage without the program. Now that Congress has extended CHIP funding through 2017, we look to the future. In the near-term, if no new funds are available after 2017, states may eliminate their separate CHIP programs. Further, many Say Ahhh!…
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GAO Report: Small Share of Medicaid Beneficiaries Account for Large Share of Cost
According to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – a congressional watchdog tasked with reporting on government programs for Congress – a small subset of Medicaid beneficiaries account for a disproportionately large share of Medicaid expenditures. Medicaid covers the very vulnerable populations of low-income people – many with disabilities – with high health…
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For Mother’s Day: Expand Medicaid and Women’s Access to Health Coverage
By Jesse Cross-Call, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Health insurance for women improves both their own health and that of their children, research shows. Yet, low-income women living in the 21 states that have not expanded Medicaid as part of health reform face glaring gaps in access to health coverage.In these states, 1.8 million uninsured…
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The ACA’s State Innovation Waivers: A Need for Transparency and a Role for Stakeholders
By Joan Alker and Sabrina Corlette Discussion of new “superwaiver” authority is a hot topic in many state and health policy circles. Recently at a conference of state health officials sponsored by the National Governors Association, several states mentioned their interest in the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) so-called Section 1332 waivers. This provision of the…
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Medicaid/CHIP Participation Rate Was 88.3 percent Among Children in 2013
By Genevieve M. Kenney and Nathaniel Anderson, Urban Institute We keep a close eye on fluctuations in the participation rate in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) because it is so critical to efforts to bring down the uninsured rate for children. Our latest data found that children’s participation in Medicaid/CHIP was 88.3…
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Florida’s Medicaid Budget: Just the Facts
In Florida, as in other states, there is a great deal of misinformation about how much the state pays for Medicaid. The program is jointly administered by both states and the federal government, and the feds pay for a majority of Medicaid’s costs in all states. However, some of Medicaid’s opponents obscure the federal government’s…
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More Eligible but Unenrolled Kids are Being Connected to Medicaid & CHIP Coverage
CMS just released 2013 participation rates for children in Medicaid and CHIP, as calculated by experts at the Urban Institute. We keep a close eye on this data as it provides important insights into how well states are reaching eligible but uninsured children (which are the majority of uninsured children). As Say Ahhh! readers well…
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Permanent 90% Federal Funding for IT Systems Is a Must For States to Achieve Medicaid Modernization
Medicaid modernization is a popular term used by states to describe how they are moving into the digital age to streamline eligibility and enrollment and improve operational efficiency. Technology is at the center of this transformation but the fact that many states have held on to 30-year old mainframe systems suggests that states won’t keep…
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Study: Medicaid Benefits are Well-Worth its Costs
By Sophia Duong A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, “Considering Whether Medicaid is Worth the Cost: Revisiting the Oregon Health Study,” finds that Medicaid is in fact a cost-effective program. The finding comes from researchers at Columbia University and New York University who analyzed data from the Oregon Health Study…
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Rules Propose Permanent 90% Federal Match for Medicaid Eligibility Systems: Tell HHS You Like It!
A year or so ago in a room of Ohio legislative staffers, I asked everyone under 30 to raise their hands. It was about 90% of the audience. I then said, “Your state’s Medicaid eligibility system is older than you.” And it was true, not only for Ohio, but also for many states across the…
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“Impossible to Argue Against” – The Significant Change in State Debates over Accepting Medicaid Funding
Last week I noted how two very unusual editorials at major newspapers in Tennessee and Florida indicated what I called a “debate turning point” on the Medicaid expansion funding issue. Since then there is more evidence of this turning point in both of these states – which haven’t yet accepted the federal money for expanded…