Rural Health
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Medicaid Expansion Brings Improvements in Coverage and Utilization to Rural CHC Patients
We previously blogged on research showing that the Medicaid expansion helps keep rural hospitals open and that the Medicaid expansion disproportionately benefited rural communities. We came to a similar conclusion in our own research when we analyzed Medicaid coverage in small towns and rural America. We found that the rate of uninsured adults in expansion…
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South Carolina’s Medicaid Proposal Will Harm Children and Families
South Carolina is the latest state to consider imposing a work requirement on parents receiving Medicaid. While there’s no formal proposal yet, officials have outlined their plans in a concept paper that raises as many questions as it answers. In a report we released today, we outline the problems with imposing a work requirement in…
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Why Virginia Expanded Medicaid: Five Key Reasons
Virginia decided today to expand Medicaid, which will allow the state to start to cover approximately 400,000 people who are unable to afford health plans yet too poor to get tax credit subsidies to buy insurance. This is a significant win for Virginians and for bipartisan cooperation in an increasingly partisan age as a newly-elected…
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Kansas Legislators Reject a New Barrier to Medicaid Coverage for Very Poor Parents and CMS Just Might Agree
At CCF we have been doing a lot of work lately trying to educate folks about who exactly is impacted by Medicaid waivers that create new barriers to coverage in states that have not accepted the option to expand Medicaid. As our recent reports on Alabama and Mississippi show, these work requirement proposals will result…
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Mississippi’s Proposed Medicaid Work Rule Would Disproportionately Harm Mothers Living in Small Towns and Rural Areas of State
Mississippi’s request for a Medicaid work requirement has emerged as the one to watch. Its section 1115 waiver is now awaiting federal action and could well be the test of whether states that have never accepted the Medicaid expansion can impose this sort of requirement on their most vulnerable parents. CCF, working with the Mississippi…
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Alabama Mothers and Children Will Bear the Brunt of Proposed Medicaid Restrictions
As regular readers of SayAhhh! know, on January 11th CMS released guidance announcing its interest in approving state proposals to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries. Since then CMS has approved three waivers to do so (along with other important and harmful changes such as lockouts which we are not talking about today) – Kentucky,…
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Proposed Medicaid Work Requirement: Impact on Alabama’s Low-Income Families with Children
Alabama’s plan to impose a work requirement on parents receiving Medicaid could cost as many as 8,700 people their health coverage in the first year alone, affecting mainly mothers whose children also would feel the impact, according to a new analysis by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and Arise Citizens’ Policy Project.…
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Medicaid Is Rural America’s Financial Midwife
Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Brianna Foster, 23, lives minutes away from Genesis Hospital, the main source of health care and the only hospital with maternity services in southeastern Ohio’s rural Muskingum County. Proximity proved potentially lifesaving last fall when Foster, pregnant with her second child, Holden, felt contractions at 31 weeks —…
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Study Documents How Medicaid Expansion Helps Keep Rural Hospitals Open
Comprehensive research in the journal Health Affairs was recently published looking at the effect of state Medicaid expansions on hospital closures. Focusing on especially rural hospitals, the authors conducted a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis, finding: “[T]he ACA’s Medicaid expansion was associated with improved hospital financial performance and substantially lower likelihoods of closure, especially in rural…
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Research: Medicaid Expansions Help Parents, Children and Families Get Coverage, Afford Care, Reduce Debt
Recently Seema Verma, the Trump Administration’s director of Medicare and Medicaid, said that Medicaid provides “a card without care.” This line echoes state critics of Medicaid like Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin who recently said: “One of the most remarkable lies that has perpetrated in recent years in the healthcare community in America is that expanded…
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Research: Coverage and Medicaid Expansion Effects on Parents and Children
Comprehensive Overview of Multiple Studies The Effects of Medicaid Expansion under the ACA: Updated Findings from a Literature Review A 2017 update of the broadest review currently published, this comprehensive look at 153 studies comparing Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states finds dramatic differences based on state Medicaid expansion decisions including huge reductions in uncompensated care…
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New Research: Medicaid Expansions Increase Coverage More in Rural Areas than in Urban Areas
Rural areas and small towns across America have special problems accessing health care. Our colleagues at the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Program have tracked the increasing numbers of rural hospital closures around the country. The Rural Health Information Hub is also a great resource on the opportunities and challenges for rural health delivery…
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Report: Children in Rural Communities More Likely to Rely on CHIP and Medicaid
The challenges that students face in many rural places are staggering. Limited access to advanced coursework, medical care, food, and employment opportunities continue to daunt students in many rural communities. Poverty rates are also climbing. In 23 states, a majority of rural students live in low-income households; this is a noticeable uptick from 2013 when…
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Trump Administration’s New Medicaid Waiver Policy Will Increase Number of Uninsured: Kentucky Likely to be First Approved
I was in Kentucky last week where I spoke to an audience of health care providers and advocates about the success of the state’s Medicaid expansion and the giant step backwards its pending waiver proposal would be. I was relieved that the state’s pending waiver proposal wasn’t approved while I was there as my trip…
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Maine Voters Voice Strong Support for Medicaid Expansion
Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, recently criticized the Medicaid program’s expansion under the Affordable Care Act in sharp terms: “We’ve put more than 10 million people, 12 million people into this program where the doctors won’t see them, and the policies that are in the Medicaid program are…
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Research Update: Health Care in Rural and Urban America
CCF is starting a new series on research in health policy. I will regularly highlight some of the new research that I have been reading. This week, I am reading studies comparing health care and poverty in rural and urban parts of the country. AHRQ’s National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report: Chartbook on Rural Health…
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The Medicaid Cap: Still a Terrible Idea for Children and Families
The Senate Majority Leader has announced his intention to take up the Graham-Cassidy proposal next week. The proposal has lots of moving parts. None of them are kid- or family-friendly. And one of them—the cap on federal Medicaid payments to states—is not only very unfriendly, but it will last forever. The cap first emerged in…
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Medicaid’s “Welcome Mat” Effect Means Medicaid Expansion Helps Children Get Health Coverage
New research in the journal Health Affairs this month gives even more evidence for a parental “welcome mat” effect that increases health coverage among children already eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program when their parents become eligible as well. Simply put, moving to “whole family coverage” through a state Medicaid expansion or…
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State Data on Seniors’ Health Coverage in Small Towns and Rural Areas
The state-specific downloads in the table below show county-level data on seniors’ Medicaid coverage for the time periods 2008/09 and 2014/15. Data on children is available here, data on non-elderly adults can be found here, and data on the total non-elderly population (children and non-elderly adults combined) can be found here. For more information on Medicaid coverage for seniors,…
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Uninsured Rates for American Indian and Alaska Native Children are Coming Down But Are Still Too High: Medicaid Cuts Put These Kids at Risk
Continuing our deeper dive into recent coverage gains among at-risk populations thanks largely to Medicaid (like our recent report on Medicaid’s disproportionate role for small towns and rural areas), today we are releasing a new paper “Coverage Trends for American Indian and Alaska Native Children and Families.” The big takeaway: Uninsured rates for AI/AN children…
