Medicaid
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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…
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New Hampshire Senate Opens Door to Medicaid Expansion
It’s still cold here in New Hampshire, with more than a foot of hard-packed snow covering the ground. But that didn’t stop the Republican-led Senate from warming up to the idea of expanding Medicaid to cover an estimated 50,000 Granite Staters. The proposal moves over to the House, where representatives are expected to support the…
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President Obama’s Budget Proposes Permanent Extension of Express Lane Eligibility
By Tara Mancini This week, the Administration reinforced its support for Express Lane Eligibility by including its permanent extension in the proposed FY 2015 budget. As many Say Ahhh! readers know, without further authorization, this effective enrollment strategy is set to expire at the end of September. Other notable extensions in Medicaid and CHIP include:…
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NASHP Releases New Resource on Medicaid Benefits for Children
By Joe Touschner Along with ICHIA and SLMB, one of the more inscrutable acronyms in health policy is EPSDT. Even those who know it stands for Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment may not know exactly who it is for and what it entails. Worse, although it is a federal policy that applies in…
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Pennsylvania Medicaid Expansion Waiver Now Open for Public Comment
It’s official! Pennsylvania’s Section 1115 Medicaid Research and Demonstration waiver application has been certified as complete by the federal government and is now open for a 30-day comment period. This is basically the list of concessions Governor Corbett wants from CMS in exchange for accepting ACA Medicaid funding to cover more uninsured Pennsylvanians. The proposal…
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FMAP Guidance on 12-Month Continuous Eligibility for Adults
By Martha Heberlein Way back in May, CMS put out guidance on five strategies designed to make it easier for Medicaid-eligible folks to connect to coverage. You’ve probably heard that several of these have been incredibly successful, including in Arkansas and California. And while 35 states have picked up one or more of the five,…