Medicaid
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Iowa Medicaid Expansion Waiver Approved!
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…
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New Graphic Shows that Even Under the Supplemental Measure Poverty Remains High for Some States
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…
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Translating Eligibility and Enrollment Lingo
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…
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National League of Cities Awards 12 Cities Planning Grants for Health Benefit Outreach Campaign
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…
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Handling Premiums with Care in Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace
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…
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Handle with Care: How Premiums Are Administered in Medicaid, CHIP and the Marketplace Matters
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…
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Extending Medicaid: Good for Parents, Great For Kids! Here’s Why
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…
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CMS Offers States Transitional Use of “Flat Files” for Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment
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…
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Putting Out the Welcome Mat for Parents by Extending Medicaid Helps Children
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…
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CMS Releases First Monthly Report on Medicaid/CHIP Enrollment
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…
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Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum Joins CCF to Champion Children’s Coverage
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…
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Ready, Set to Enroll? Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment on the Cusp of 2014
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…
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Children’s Health Coverage on the Eve of the Affordable Care Act
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…
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Poll: Most Americans Believe the Number of Children Who Are Uninsured Has Increased in the Last Five Years
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families commissioned a national survey of 1000 adults 18 and older to measure perceptions about the state of children in America today. The survey focused on two issues that impact children: health insurance coverage and poverty. The survey was conducted September 20-22, 2013 by PerryUndem Research and Communication. The majority…
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Getting into Gear for 2014: Shifting New Medicaid Eligibility and Enrollment Policies into Drive
On January 1, 2014, many key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will start to go into effect, including the expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults and the launch of new Medicaid eligibility and enrollment processes, which are designed to move toward a coordinated enrollment system across health coverage programs, including Medicaid, CHIP, and…
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More Details on Michigan’s Medicaid Expansion Emerge
Late last week Michigan filed a waiver amendment with CMS that provides more detail on what they are planning in their Medicaid expansion, which they call “Healthy Michigan.” The waiver amendment is a huge step forward in covering low-income adults, so here’s the good news and a few elements we plan to keep our eye…
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Medicaid Enrollment is Up – as Expected
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Media reports have expressed surprise, even concern, that early enrollment in Medicaid under health reform has outpaced enrollment in the new health insurance marketplaces so far. But, that was expected to happen, even before the well-documented technical problems affecting HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace website. The fact is, the…
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And Another Thing (or two) On Inaccurate Reporting About Medicaid and the ACA …
Perhaps the most egregious error I have seen in recent reporting on Medicaid enrollment and this ACA is from a recent report in CBS News. A CBS News analysis shows that in many of the 15 state-based health insurance exchanges more people are enrolling in Medicaid rather than buying private health insurance. And if that…
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Reality Check: Interest in New Coverage Options and Support for Medicaid Expansion Strong
Amidst all the noise, a new Commonwealth Fund survey provides a helpful reality check that focuses our attention back where it should be: on actual uninsured Americans and how they are approaching the new coverage options available to them. This information is super-current and comes directly from a survey of Americans and not from state…
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Strong Medicaid Enrollment So Far No Surprise to Me
I was going to write this blog earlier in the week but got waylaid by meetings, meetings and more meetings! Today I wake up and see a front-page story in the Washington Post: Medicaid Tops Private Plans in Tallies of New Sign-Ups. It’s not very often that you see a front page story on Medicaid…