Medicaid
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89,000 Pennsylvania Children Lose Medicaid Due to Shortsighted Policies & Bureaucratic Backlogs
By George Hoover, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children Having dedicated my career to making health care coverage accessible to all Pennsylvanians, I am dismayed over recent actions by the state that are jeopardizing health care access for children. The number of Pennsylvania children covered through Medicaid has plummeted by about 89,000 in recent months, including many…
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Medicaid and CHIP Waiver Transparency Rules Take Effect Today: CMS Unveils New Waiver Website
As regular readers of Say Ahhh! know, CMS has issued final regulations on public input and transparency with respect to Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP waivers. These rules have been a loooong time coming and much needed since 1115 waivers can be very consequential. And today, April 27th, 2012, the rules become effective. My last…
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A Question of Priorities
By Martha Heberlein As the Energy and Commerce Committee searches for options to save the Department of Defense from cuts, coverage for millions of children, parents, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities could end up on the chopping block. This is just one of a number of distressing offsets that also includes repealing…
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Medicaid Enrollment Slows While State Revenues Steadily Increase
By Tara Mancini It’s true of most states that Medicaid enrollment has slowed and state revenues are steadily increasing. Yet, as governor’s prepared their budgets for fiscal year 2013, enough uncertainty lingered that when budgeting for Medicaid, there continued to be a focus on cost containment. Key findings from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and…
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Block Grants – Success or Failure? You Be the Judge
By Jocelyn Guyer Whether you view something as a success or failure often depends upon which side of the field you are standing. On one side of the block-granting field, we have low-income families who lost the helping hand they needed during tough economic times as the block-granted TANF program failed to respond to the…
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Exciting News from Wisconsin – For Kids Nationwide
By Jon Peacock, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families It hasn’t gotten much attention yet, but at an April 11 meeting in Madison, Secretary Sebelius delivered some great news for children in Wisconsin and across the nation. Following a small meeting about benefits of the health care reform law for women, Sebelius met with a few…
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Decisions, Decisions: ACOs in Medicaid
By Tara Mancini Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have been in vogue for some time when it comes to coordinating care for Medicare patients; however, it is a relatively novel ideal for managing Medicaid populations. The populations covered by Medicaid differ vastly from that of Medicare, and therefore Medicaid ACOs require some different practices. A new…
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State Budget Woes? Take a Look at Revenues, Not Medicaid
By Martha Heberlein For those regular Say Ahhh! readers, you know we have long harped on accurately depicting the role of Medicaid in state budgets. When new data are released, we update our report or write another blog to try to correct a misrepresentation that Medicaid is solely responsible for state budget woes. Today we are releasing a…
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State Budget Woes: Revenue Declines, Not Medicaid Spending, are to Blame
As states have faced large budget deficits, some politicians have laid the blame at Medicaid’s doorstep, saying that the program’s costs are growing “out of control” and that it is “crowding out” other priorities. While spending in Medicaid has grown as a result of increased enrollment due to the recession, most of this added spending…
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ACA’s Medicaid Expansion is Popular with Public
One of the least often discussed provisions of the Affordable Care Act continues to be one of the most popular according to the latest Kaiser Health News tracking poll. Seventy percent of those responding to the poll thought favorably about the ACA provision to expand Medicaid to more low-income uninsured adults. That’s right up there…
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Holding Insurers Accountable: Should We Add an MLR to Medicaid?
A hot issue in many states today is whether or not to move more Medicaid beneficiaries, and often very vulnerable beneficiaries, into managed care. Indeed, many managed care companies are interested in getting or keeping a foot in the Medicaid market given the expansion of Medicaid coming in 2014. And many, though not all, states are…
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Sharpen your Speed Reading Skills – Regs are Coming Fast and Furious
By Jocelyn Guyer In recent days, we’ve started to feel a bit like Lucy and Ethel in their famous chocolate factory scene where the conveyor belt keeps speeding up faster than they can box the candy. Lately, HHS and other federal agencies have been releasing important ACA regulations at such a fast and furious pace…
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Ryan Budget – Same Old Tune
and Martha Heberlein House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a budget plan we’re guessing will sound pretty familiar to you as it looks much like the plan he released last year. It would convert Medicaid to a block grant, deeply slashing federal funding by $810 billion over the next ten years (bigger than the…
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The New Review and Approval Process Rule for Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP Demonstration Waivers
Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP demonstration waivers are intended to allow for research and demonstration projects to test new approaches in program design and administration. The Affordable Care Act required the Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations designed to ensure that the public has meaningful opportunities to provide input into the Section…
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Program Design
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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Financing
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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Eligibility and Coverage
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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Delivery System Reform
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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About Medicaid
Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families contributes an independent perspective to the public dialogue on the future of Medicaid through the lens of children and their families.
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Medicaid Block Grants Reduce Flexibility & Less Responsive to Changing Need
House Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan, will soon release a budget that will likely include a Medicaid block grant. Meanwhile, I have been busy preparing for a debate on block grants in a class I’m taking. I found that block granting Medicaid is a risky idea because it would make the program less flexible for…
