Medicaid
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Crossing Into New Territory with 25,000 Newly Covered Kids
By Anna Strong, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families At Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, we’ve been working for many years to ensure that all children have health coverage here in our state. Our latest report, Crossing into New Territory: Kids’ Health Coverage in 2014, outlines the progress Arkansas has made in covering kids since…
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Florida Legislature Adjourns with Unfinished Medicaid Business: Federal Hospital Funding to Run Out in 2015 Putting the Pressure on For Next Year
The Florida legislature adjourned for 2014 without accepting the federal Medicaid funding on the table to extend coverage to as many as a million Floridians who would have been eligible. According to the state’s Social Services Estimating Conference, for the current fiscal year (which will end on June 30, the state could have received $1,258,054,808…
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Washington State’s Hard Work on Medicaid Renewals Pays Off
As part of my colleague’s blog series on renewals, I wanted to share how hard work is paying off on Medicaid renewals in Washington state. Washington is among the first states in the country to get started on MAGI-based renewals. What are MAGI-based renewals? Just like new applications, renewals in Medicaid will be based on…
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Schools Play Important Role in Connecting Kids to Coverage
Donielle Rooks, CCHI Program Coordinator The idea that schools are a link to successful children and families is not new. Growing up, my parents received all types of information from my school about academics, fundraisers, before and after school programs and community organizations that helped provide basic services. Most families understood that if they had…
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Experience of Ohio Family Depicts Plight of the “Loopers”
Remember the Medicaid loopers? These were the folks who applied for coverage through the health insurance Marketplace only to be told they – or a family member – were not eligible because the Marketplace assessed them as eligible for Medicaid coverage. In some cases, parents did not learn that their child was not on their Marketplace…
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Medicaid Option: The Good Deal for States is Better than Expected
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities In a little-noticed finding in last week’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on health reform, CBO sharply lowered its estimates of how much the Medicaid expansion will cost states. We’ve noted repeatedly that the federal government will cover the large bulk of the expansion’s cost. As our new report explains, these new…
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ACA Promises Streamlined Medicaid/CHIP Renewals, After the First Round
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) envisions highly automated renewals for Medicaid and CHIP. With new eligibility systems capable of retrieving personal eligibility-related data from trusted sources, such as the state’s wage database, agencies should be able to renew coverage for most enrollees without requiring them to complete forms or submit paperwork. But first, state agencies…
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Renewing Medicaid and CHIP Under the Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) vision for no wrong-door, streamlined enrollment extends to annual renewals. Ultimately, the process should be highly automated with fewer burdens on enrollees to fill out forms or submit paperwork to prove eligibility. However, the first round of renewals will be more involved because eligibility for children, parents, pregnant women, and…
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Are States Using Their Extra Medicaid Federal Match to Boost Eligibility Capacity?
Recent media attention highlighting significant backlogs of Medicaid applications waiting for eligibility determinations at the state level reminded me of what I reported in this blog last April: as of October 1, 2013, states can receive a 75% federal match for ongoing operational costs associated with their new eligibility systems, including personnel. So I’m wondering…
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CMS Helps Florida Out with Short-Term Fix – Florida Should Accept Medicaid Option for Long-Term Solution
By Greg Mellowe, Florida CHAIN The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced its approval of a three-year extension of Florida’s Statewide Medicaid Managed Care program, but only a one-year extension of the Low Income Pool (LIP). The LIP provides the state with additional federal Medicaid funding that hospitals can use to…
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Pennsylvania Governor Corbett’s Medicaid Waiver Evokes Lots of Concern!
Governor Corbett’s “Healthy PA” waiver proposal includes a request for 24 waivers of federal law – a record among recent similar Medicaid waiver requests. Perhaps as a result, a significant number of national and state stakeholders and policy analysts submitted comments to the federal government on the waiver request – the public comment period closed…
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Washington Reduces Medicaid in Emergency Departments – Credit to Seven Best Practices?
By Keanan Lane, CCF Research Intern & McCourt School of Public Policy Graduate Student The recently released findings from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment have renewed focus on Medicaid coverage and emergency department (ED) utilization. The results showed an overall increase in ED visits, driven primarily by those classified as “non-emergent,” “primary care treatable,” and…
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Medicaid Provides Needed Access to Care
Medicaid and CHIP significantly improve access to needed health care for the populations they cover. As of June 2011, Medicaid covered 25 million adults and over 32 million children (along with its smaller companion program, CHIP). The fact sheet indicates Medicaid enrollees have comparable access to care as those with private coverage and much better access and fewer…
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Study Examines Access to Primary Care for New Patients
By Martha Heberlein Much of the focus over the last six months has been on connecting folks to coverage. But once that’s been accomplished, the next question that often (rightfully) pops into people’s minds is whether or not these newly-insured consumers will be able to access care. Scores of studies over the years have consistently…
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Health Affairs Study Finds Adults in Income Range of ACA Medicaid Expansion are Healthier than Pre-ACA Enrollees
By Tara Mancini New research that appears in a Health Affairs “Web First” article finds that adults (ages 19-64) who are newly eligible for Medicaid under the ACA, and those who were previously eligible but not enrolled had similar or better health than pre-ACA enrollees. This is true for those in the income range that qualifies…
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CMS Reports Medicaid Enrollment Gains of 3 Million (and counting)
After hearing that more than 7 million people were enrolled through the marketplaces before the close of open enrollment on March 31st, we’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of companion Medicaid and CHIP enrollment data. The wait is over! CMS has released monthly eligibility and enrollment activity data since October 2013, but the hot-off-the-press February…
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Ryan Budget Again Proposes Medicaid Block Grant – Threatens to Add Millions to Ranks of Uninsured & Underinsured
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget again proposes to radically restructure Medicaid by converting it into a block grant, and it would cut federal Medicaid funding steeply, by $732 billion over the next decade. It would also repeal health reform’s Medicaid expansion. The combined…
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Two Takeaways from New Hampshire and Michigan Medicaid Expansions
By Jesse Cross-Call, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities New Hampshire’s legislature has passed and Governor Maggie Hassan has signed into law legislation that will expand Medicaid as part of health reform effective July 1. This means that combined with Michigan, where expansion takes effect tomorrow, an additional 600,000 uninsured people will be newly eligible for…
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Sign On Letter Circulating to Express Concerns About Governor Corbett’s “Healthy PA” Medicaid Expansion Waiver
As you know, we, and many others, have had concerns about Governor Corbett’s Healthy PA proposal, which is currently open for public comment at the federal level. While we and other groups commenting support the intent of the state to move forward, the proposal has many problems. The deadline to comment is Friday, April 11th…
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The Tipping Point: New Hampshire Becomes 26th State to Expand Medicaid!
New Hampshire Governor Hassan signed bipartisan Medicaid expansion legislation into law yesterday, and my home state becomes the twenty-sixth (plus D.C.) to expand health coverage to the state’s lowest income adults. Although New Hampshire is moving toward an Arkansas-like private option, rather than delay implementation, in May the state will begin providing premium assistance to…