Medicaid
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Extending Iowa’s Waiver Request Would Set a Bad Precedent for Other States Considering Medicaid Expansion
By Sean Miskell As we near the end of the first year of expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, it is also time to revisit state proposals to alter their Medicaid programs through Section 1115 Medicaid waivers. Last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Georgetown CCF, and 20 other national and state…
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No Tricks Here, CMS Treats States with Permanent Enhanced Funding for Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Systems
There could hardly be a sweeter treat for state Medicaid agencies than to learn that CMS is proposing to the make permanent the enhanced federal funding match of 90 percent for Medicaid eligibility and enrollment systems and a 3-year extension on certain cost-allocation requirements. It was a big deal when CMS first proposed the 90/10…
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Arkansas Proposes Unwelcome Changes to the Private Option
Last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Georgetown CCF and 15 other national and state groups submitted comments to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services outlining concerns with proposed changes to the state’s Section 1115 Medicaid waiver which authorizes the state’s Medicaid expansion – known as the “private option.” We expressed…
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Rural Hospital Closures: Tracking Tool Shows Impact in States Reluctant to Expand Medicaid
At the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program, Director Mark Holmes and colleagues are tracking the increasing numbers of rural hospital closures across the United States with this dynamic map. As part of this work the Rural Health program has also looked at the impact on rural populations nationwide of state decisions not…
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Tracking Medicaid Enrollment and Spending
By Joe Touschner Each year, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured reports on the findings from its survey of budgets and enrollment among state Medicaid programs. (The budget survey is not to be confused with the Kaiser-Georgetown CCF survey of Medicaid and CHIP eligibility and enrollment policies coming in January). This year’s edition…
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New Kaiser Survey Finds More States Intend to Extend Primary Care Rate Increase
By Sophia Duong In a previous post, I summarized the initiatives taken by Congress and states to extend the payment rate increase for primary care services, set to expire on December 31, 2014. At the time, six states were reported to finance the primary care bump through 2015 with their own state funds. Now, Kaiser…
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School-Aged Children Benefit from ACA “Stairstep” Provision
One piece of the ACA that has received less attention than others (outside CCF at least!) is the requirement for states to align eligibility for all children under 19, also referred to as the elimination of “stairstep” eligibility for kids. A recent USA Today article focused new attention on this provision. Under the ACA states…
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States Putting In Place Delayed Medicaid Expansions Must Make Good Faith Effort to Ensure Nobody is Left Behind
Federal approval last month of Pennsylvania’s new plan to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on January 1, 2015 has brought urgency to this obscure but important issue. States that decide to expand Medicaid where the date of expansion occurs after the original January 1, 2014 ACA Medicaid and health marketplace start…
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Wisconsin Loses Out on At Least $300 Million Due to Governor’s Badgercare Decision
Wisconsin is the only state in the nation to have gone down a very shortsighted and bizarre path with respect to the Medicaid expansion – one that has resulted in serious fiscal challenges for the state. So what did Wisconsin do? Well, in an attempt to “stick it to the man”, Governor Walker said no…
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Uninsured Children More Likely to Face Access and Affordability Barriers, Less Likely to Receive Preventive Care
Did you know that uninsured children are nearly 27 percentage points less likely than insured children to have received a routine checkup in the last year? That was one of the findings in a report CCF released with the Urban Institute earlier this month. Now most Say Ahhh! readers won’t find that statistic all that surprising…
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Public Comments on Indiana’s HIP 2.0 Medicaid Expansion Proposal Submitted!
For those of you interested in the nitty gritty around pending Medicaid Section 1115 waiver proposals we have some more reading material for you. Last night was the deadline for submitting public comments to federal CMS on Indiana’s pending HIP 2.0 proposal. It’s good news that Indiana is serious about accepting the federal funds and…
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Medicaid expansion and the “policy window of opportunity”
Recently I wrote here about the changing political and policy climate around Medicaid expansion and Dr. Liane Wong followed up with an overview of the role of child advocates in working around the same issue, highlighting a report by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Dr. Wong’s piece reminded me of some basic theory any…
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CDC Survey Finds Uninsured Rate Drops for Adults, Remains Steady for Kids
In the rapidly changing health coverage landscape, getting an accurate snapshot of what’s happening to uninsured rates is a bit like trying to get a good photo of your new puppy sitting and smiling for the camera. Today, we got one of the most rigorous and timely snapshots that we can possibly get from a…
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Data Debrief: Overview of the ACS and CPS
On Tuesday, September 16th, the US Census Bureau will issue two reports: Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013 and Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013. The former analyzes data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the latter uses the Current Population Survey (CPS). With the release of the most recent…
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Advocating for Children’s Coverage Under the Medicaid Expansion Option
By Dr. Liane Wong, Health Leader and Program Officer, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation For those up-to-date Say Ahhh! readers, Adam Searing recently wrote about the more compelling reasons – namely $423.6 billion federal dollars plus billions of uncompensated care funds to hospitals – why it’s getting much harder for Governors to turn down Medicaid…
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Medicaid Matters For Children: Alabama’s Investment in Extending the Medicaid Payment Increase
By Dr. Marsha Raulerson, Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics Across the country, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provide health coverage to more than 43 million children, including half of all low-income children in the United States. This summer, I cared for one of those children. In August, a 17 year old…
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Rural Children Rely on Medicaid and CHIP More than Ever
By Carrie Fitzgerald, First Focus A report released today by First Focus shows that in rural parts of the country, children are covered by public insurance sources (Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP) at a rate higher than their urban counterparts. In 2012, Medicaid and CHIP covered 47 percent of rural children compared to…
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We Can Fix This, People! More than Half of Uninsured Parents Are Hispanic
New data zeroes in on a subgroup of uninsured adults not always studied: uninsured parents. An Urban Institute report released yesterday found that more than half (57 percent) of uninsured parents surveyed in March/June 2014 were Hispanic and more than one-third (38.4 percent) said their primary language was Spanish. While I know this does not…
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A First Look at How the Affordable Care Act is Affecting Coverage among Parents and Children
Editor’s Note: This blog originally appeared on the Health Affairs blog. By Joan Alker, Georgetown CCF and Genevieve M. Kenney, Urban Institute Following the implementation of the major coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014, the question arises: “How is the health law affecting uninsured children and their families?” Today, the Urban…
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Looking Under the ACA Hood to Check on How Uninsured Children are Doing
Recently, CCF teamed up with the researchers at the Urban Institute to take a first look at how the Affordable Care Act is impacting the rate of uninsured children. The high level data indicates that, so far, there has been no detectable change nationally, although children’s uninsured rates remains at historically low levels. But state…