Rural Health
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CMS Guidance Spotlights Ways Medicaid Can Support Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Services in Schools
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently released a Joint Informational Bulletin that offers a helpful roadmap to states and schools on the ways certain Medicaid authorities can help support school-based mental health and substance use disorder services for children and adolescents. As…
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Is There Really A Question? Intervenor States Have Clear Interest in Defending the Affordable Care Act
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has asked the parties in Texas v. United States to file supplemental briefings on the issue of whether the defendant states attorneys generals and the U.S. House of Representatives have standing to appeal. Standing is a legal term that means a party has a right to bring a lawsuit,…
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Medicaid Block Grants: Questions State Leaders Should Ask
CMS Administrator Seema Verma, the top federal Medicaid official, has been encouraging states to be the first on the block to block grant their Medicaid programs. Some states are beginning to respond. Late last month Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee signed legislation directing him to submit a proposal for a Medicaid block grant to the federal…
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Nebraska Residents Will Have to Wait for Medicaid Expansion While Governor Puts More Obstacles in Path to Coverage
Writer George Orwell would love the Nebraska Governor’s complex plan to implement the simple expansion of Medicaid health coverage passed by Nebraska voters in 2018 that would help an estimated 95,000 of the state’s residents gain coverage. In Orwell’s book “1984”, the fictional state of Oceania asked citizens to accept opposing ideas as both being…
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Child Health Providers and Advocates Ask HHS Secretary to Reject Work Requirements for Low-Income Parents
Today Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families joined over 50 other national health care provider, research and consumer groups focused on children and families to send a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar raising concerns about the harm of work requirements for children and families, particularly in states that have not expanded Medicaid. The…
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Top 10 Rural Counties Where Kids Rely on Medicaid for Health Coverage
As readers of SayAhhh! know, Georgetown University CCF and the University of North Carolina’s Sheps Rural Health Research Center has a joint project which has been tracking the role of Medicaid for rural areas and small towns. We recently updated our online data resource with county figures for 2015/2016, a time period during which the impact…
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CMS Weighing Decision that Would Lead to Loss of Health Coverage for Thousands of Tennessee Families Living in Poverty
Tennessee, a state that has not accepted the option to expand Medicaid to more low-income adults, has become the fifth state to ask CMS to impose a work or community service reporting requirement on parents with incomes at or below 98% of the federal poverty level. South Carolina is next in the queue. If the…
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Lack of ACA Navigator Funding Leads to Consumer Confusion, Decreased Enrollment
Open Enrollment is over in most states, and enrollment numbers are down slightlyfrom 8.8 million plan selections on healthcare.gov for plan year 2018 to 8.4 million plan selections for plan year 2019. Navigators thought the 2018 Open Enrollment was challenging, after a slew of policy changes including massive Navigator grant funding cuts, shortened enrollment period, 90 percent cuts to federal…
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Oklahoma’s Medicaid Waiver Proposal Will Harm Its Most Vulnerable Families
Unfortunately, our series of reports looking at harmful state Medicaid work requirement rules targeting very poor parents is getting longer. Today we are releasing an updated look at Oklahoma’s proposal, which is currently up for public comment at the federal level. Six states now have active proposals – Mississippi, Alabama, and South Dakota have proposals…
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Medicaid Waiver Proposal For Oklahoma Medicaid Beneficiaries Would Harm Low-Income Families With Children
Introduction Through an amendment to its Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration waiver, Oklahoma is seeking federal permission to impose work reporting rules on very low-income parents and caregivers age 19-50 receiving health coverage through Medicaid. Parents of children below age six would be exempt. Under the proposal, which would be phased in, these beneficiaries would have…
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New Report Finds South Carolina’s Medicaid Waiver Would Leave Thousands of Poor Parents Uninsured
[Editor’s Note: On March 4, 2019 South Carolina posted a revised application for state public comment.] Just before the holidays, South Carolina posted its application for new work-related reporting rules for very low-income parents and caretaker relatives with incomes below 67 percent of the poverty line who are insured through Medicaid. Today we partnered with South Carolina…
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The Importance of Medicaid to Kentucky’s Rural Areas is Eye Popping
In 2017, we embarked on a new project with the Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina Sheps Center for Health Services Research to examine the role of Medicaid in rural areas and small towns. In our first report, Medicaid is a Lifeline for Small Towns and Rural Communities, we highlighted the…
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New Policy Brief asks: “Why are Tennessee moms and babies dying at such a high rate?”
Tennessee Justice Center’s recent policy brief focuses on rising rates of infant and maternal mortality in Tennessee. When I saw the state’s dismal outcomes in the 2018 America’s Health Rankings Health of Women and Children report, I immediately wanted to learn why moms and babies were dying at higher and higher rates in Tennessee. According…
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Medicaid at the 2018 Ballot Box: What to Look For (Part 1)
Next Tuesday (as usual) I will be staying up late to see what happens in the midterm elections. But for the first time in more than twenty years of working on Medicaid there will be so much to watch out for that will directly affect Medicaid! Today I will start with the 17 states that…
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More Rural Hospitals Closing in States Refusing Medicaid Coverage Expansion
The University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program tracks closures of rural hospitals across the country. From 2010 to the present there are six states with five or more rural hospital closures. Texas leads with a stunning 15 rural hospitals closed, followed closely by Tennessee (9 rural hospitals closed) and Georgia (7 rural hospitals…
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Rural Residents and Communities Have Much at Stake in Medicaid Expansion
Last year, working with our partners at the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Project, we released a report that underscored the critical role that Medicaid plays in rural areas and small towns with populations below 50,000. This year Jack Hoadley, Mark Holmes and I took a look at how Medicaid expansion has impacted these same…
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Health Insurance Coverage in Small Towns and Rural America: The Role of Medicaid Expansion
Introduction Medicaid has been a key factor in lowering the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance. Nationally, the uninsured rate for all Americans under the age of 65 (adults and children) fell dramatically between 2010 and 2016 from 18.2 percent to 10.4 percent, rising slightly to 10.7 percent in 2017.[note]These data measure insurance status…
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Public Comments are Virtually Unanimous Against Mississippi’s Harmful Medicaid Proposal
Last month, federal CMS reopened the public comment period on Mississippi’s proposed Section 1115 Medicaid work requirements waiver at the same time as Kentucky’s comment period was reopened. Mississippi’s proposal has not garnered as much attention as Kentucky’s, which as regular readers of SayAhhh! know, is currently on hold due to a federal court decision.…
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Louisiana Report: 2016 Medicaid Expansion Cut Adult Uninsured Rate in Half, Reduced Coverage Disparities, Benefited Rural and Urban Areas
A new report from the Louisiana Department of Health, the 2017 Louisiana Health Insurance Survey, shows multiple positive effects from Louisiana’s recent Medicaid expansion – and continuing overall satisfaction with Medicaid and other coverage. While the report focused on adult coverage, it also noted that Louisiana retains its remarkable success at reducing the uninsured rate…
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Medicaid Expansion: The Facts Are In
With 34 states (including DC) now expanding Medicaid since 2014 and 17 states still refusing expansion, the ability for researchers to compare patient experiences in these disparate two groups of states has resulted in literally hundreds of high-quality studies – a “natural experiment” created by the Supreme Court’s decision to make the expansion optional. A…
