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Medicaid

  • Children’s Behavioral Health Care Use in Medicaid: Highlights from a National Analysis

    Guest

    By Kamala Allen and Taylor Hendricks, Center for Health Care Strategies “Eleven-year-old Angel has moved from one foster home to another since age six. His mother struggles with heroin addiction, his father is deceased, and he rarely sees his three siblings who live in separate foster homes. Angel has a hard time concentrating in school…

  • New Badgercare Waiver is Good News/Bad News for Transitional Medicaid

    Guest

    By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) announced yesterday that Wisconsin has been granted a federal waiver to make substantial changes to BadgerCare.  As anticipated, the waiver allows the state to extend BadgerCare up to the poverty level for adults who aren’t custodial parents of dependent…

  • Michigan Medicaid Expansion Waiver Approved; CMS Also Releases New Medicaid/CHIP FAQs

    Joan Alker

    While I was enjoying some holiday down time with the family, CMS was busy churning things out over the past few weeks. On December 30th, CMS approved Michigan’s Section 1115 Medicaid waiver to help open the doors to Medicaid coverage for an estimated 300,000-500,000 Michiganders.  The Medicaid expansion,will be implemented on April 1st. The Michigan…

  • Budget Deal Kicks “Medicaid Extenders” Down the Road, Adds DSH Delay

    Elisabeth Wright Burak

    Earlier I wrote about progress in the Senate on the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) repeal, or “doc fix,” which passed the Finance committee with the Medicaid extenders intact.  Since time was running out for the House and Senate to agree on the exact terms for a permanent SGR fix, the Murray-Ryan budget agreement on…

  • Many Southern States Miss Opportunity to Address Health Disparities

    CCFadmin

    By Tara Mancini A new report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) indicates that a little more than half (53%) of uninsured people of color have family income at or below 138% and therefore should qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as the ACA originally intended. Yet, almost a third (30%) of…

  • Health Policy Institute Releases New Report on Florida’s Medicaid Long-Term Care Program

    Guest

    By Laura Summer, Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Florida’s new Medicaid Managed Long-Term Care program is in place in six regions of the state and will be fully operational statewide by March 1, 2014.  Planning for this new program has been in the works for several years. In 2011, the Florida legislature established the two-part…

  • Pennsylvania’s Medicaid Waiver Proposal Does Not Impress

    Joan Alker

      Last Friday, Governor Corbett’s Administration released it’s Section 1115 waiver application draft. This initiates the process for the required 30-day state comment period that must precede the submission of the waiver request to the federal government. The state will be holding a series of public hearings and webinars with the final hearing in Harrisburg…

  • Iowa Medicaid Expansion Waiver Approved!

    Joan Alker

    Just in time for Christmas, and more importantly in time to get the program up and running by January 1st, federal CMS has granted Iowa’s request for two Section 1115 waivers to allow the state to pursue its own version of Medicaid expansion. This is good news for the more than 100,000 Iowans who stand…

  • New Graphic Shows that Even Under the Supplemental Measure Poverty Remains High for Some States

    CCFadmin

    By Tara Mancini Everyone loves a good infographic, and here is a pretty nifty one from Stateline that visualizes the difference between the official poverty rate and the supplemental poverty measure for all 50 states and D.C. Readers can toggle between three different hover maps: The three-year average (2010-2012) of the official poverty rate for…

  • Translating Eligibility and Enrollment Lingo

    Sonya Schwartz

    My colleagues just released a helpful update on state progress in creating more consumer-friendly eligibility and enrollment systems.  If you’re like me, when reading Medicaid eligibility terms like “MAGI conversion” and “flat file,” your mind wanders to a foreign money exchange or even a children’s book character—yes, the omnipresent Flat Stanley—rather than focusing on people…

  • National League of Cities Awards 12 Cities Planning Grants for Health Benefit Outreach Campaign

    CCFadmin

    By Wesley Prater As part of the NLC’s Cities Expanding Health Care Access for Children and Families Initiative, funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies, 12 cities recently were awarded planning grants up to $30,000 to develop citywide outreach campaigns, focused on enrolling eligible children and families in Medicaid and CHIP.  During a six-month planning period, the…

  • Handling Premiums with Care in Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace

    Tricia Brooks

    In my former life as a CHIP director, I came to appreciate how tough it is for low-income families to make ends meet.  In the hierarchy of needs, I think we all agree that paying the rent and utilities, putting food on the table, and making sure you can show up for work by having…

  • Handle with Care: How Premiums Are Administered in Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace Matters

    CCFadmin

    The evidence is clear that premiums that are unaffordable or charged at too low an income level are a barrier to enrollment and retention of health coverage. However, the approach to premium collection also plays an important role in helping low-income families and individuals secure and maintain coverage. In this new brief, CCF explores the…

  • Extending Medicaid: Good for Parents, Great For Kids! Here’s Why

    Sonya Schwartz

    One of the best state approaches for covering the remaining low-income uninsured children is to put out the welcome mat for the whole family by extending Medicaid coverage for parents.  While most low-income kids are currently eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, they continue to be disproportionately uninsured: in 2012, they were 45.1 percent of the…

  • CMS Offers States Transitional Use of “Flat Files” for Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment

    CCFadmin

    By Martha Heberlein Citing the ongoing delay in transferring Medicaid/CHIP applicants from the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) to states, CMS has given states the option to enroll new Medicaid applicants based on the “flat files,” as opposed to full applicant accounts, in the hopes of getting new applicants connected to coverage by January 1. To…

  • Putting Out the Welcome Mat for Parents by Extending Medicaid Helps Children

    CCFadmin

    While most low-income children are currently eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, low-income children (those below 200 percent of the FPL) are disproportionately uninsured. One of the best state approaches for covering these remaining low-income children is to put out the welcome mat for the whole family by extending Medicaid coverage for parents and other low-income…

  • CMS Releases First Monthly Report on Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment

    Joan Alker

    Just over 1.46 million persons were determined eligible for new Medicaid or CHIP coverage in October – that is an 8.6% increase from the average of the three months prior. The vast majority is Medicaid eligible (1,344,661) with 115,706 new CHIP eligibles – almost evenly divided between states that are expanding Medicaid and those that…

  • Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum Joins CCF to Champion Children’s Coverage

    Guest

    By Priscilla Huang, Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum I had the opportunity to join health policy experts from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a panel discussion today  hosted by New American Media, discussing encouraging findings in CCF’s latest report on the status of…

  • Ready, Set to Enroll? Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment on the Cusp of 2014

    Tricia Brooks

    By Martha Heberlein and Tricia Brooks Of late, most of the media attention on ACA implementation has focused on the technical glitches in the federal (and to a lesser extent state) marketplaces and the end of inadequate individual insurance plans, while state Medicaid agencies have been hard at work behind the scenes revamping their business…

  • Children’s Health Coverage on the Eve of the Affordable Care Act

    CCFadmin

    Georgetown University Center for Children and Families researchers analyzed health insurance data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey to get a closer look at children’s coverage trends. On the eve of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act coverage expansions, the authors found important lessons from the success the U.S. has had in covering children. The number of uninsured…