Vulnerable Populations
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Covering Former Foster Youth Should Be Easy But …
Sometimes, it’s the simplest provision of a law that works the best – like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health plan until 26. But youth leaving the foster care system as they transition to adulthood don’t have families to fall back on, so the ACA…
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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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Navigating the Application Process for Families that Include Immigrants
Immigrant resources from a webinar for assisters, February 21, 2014, sponsored by HHS in partnership with CCF, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
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CBPP Finds New Plan to Repeal ACA Would Lead to Deep Cuts for Medicaid Beneficiaries, Higher Costs and Fewer Consumer Protections
By Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) unveiled a new plan to repeal all of health reform (the Affordable Care Act or ACA) except for certain provisions related to Medicare, cap federal Medicaid funding, and create a new tax credit for people…
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Medicaid and CHIP Know How to Do Enrollment; Performance Bonuses Offer Model for Future Program Improvements
Enrollment in health coverage? Medicaid and CHIP know how to do it! News accounts last week that 3.9 of the 6 million people who signed up for health coverage between October 1 and the end of 2013 were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP came as no surprise to those of us who follow these critical…
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2014 is Finally Here! Let the Coverage Begin …
I was excited to come to work today – the first business day of full implementation of the Affordable Care Act. It has been many decades in the making – but the concept that all Americans should have access to affordable health insurance is finally the law of the land. And anti-consumer practices, used by…
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The Administration’s New Welcome Mat for Immigrants: “It’s Safe to Apply”
By Dinah Wiley In previous blogs, I’ve described the reluctance of immigrant families to enroll in Medicaid, CHIP, or marketplace insurance and subsidies. The chief worry for a mixed-status household is whether a health insurance application will trigger immigration enforcement, resulting in “removal” (deportation) of a member of the family who would be separated from…
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Healthcare.Gov Technical Problems Aside, the Show Must Go On
At the three-week mark, it’s time to admit that the problems with Healthcare.Gov are more than opening day jitters and huge lines at the box office. On one hand, the sheer number and complexity of the business functions that Healthcare.Gov is intended to perform require extremely sophisticated and high-performing software and hardware. On the other…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Putting Out the Welcome Mat & Encouraging Enrollment, Part II
By Dinah Wiley In Part I of this blog series, I noted that immigrants have unique concerns about signing up for health insurance, and are less likely than citizens to do so, and that blog addressed confidentiality concerns of immigrant families. The privacy concerns are paramount, yet a mixed-status family will also wonder if they…
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How Will Immigrants Fare Under Health Reform? Encouraging Enrollment
By Dinah Wiley Immigrants who are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP, compared to their citizen counterparts, are less likely to sign up for health coverage. Why is this so? It’s true that newcomers to the U.S. are more healthy than native-born Americans, for a few years at least. Yet when immigrants are offered private insurance…
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Health Insurance for Immigrant Families
The webinar examines changes in health reform law and regulations that affect the eligibility of immigrants and the access barriers they face, particularly when part of mixed-status families. It also looks at which rules have not changed, showing a snapshot of the landscape of coverage options for immigrant families as of 2013. Download the recording
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How Have Immigrant Families Fared (So Far) Under Health Reform?
By Dinah Wiley Immigrant families are among the most in need of health reform, with high rates of uninsurance and poverty despite employment rates as high as those of citizen-headed households. How will these families fare under health reform? Though a few federal rules are still undecided, we can safely say that many non-citizens will…
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New Study Findings on Mixed-Status Immigrant Families: Threat of Family Separation Affects Health of the Children
By Dinah Wiley With the focus in the Nation’s Capitol on immigration reform, concerns abound about border security and about the fate of the 11.1 million undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. But the current debates have focused little on the 4.5 million citizen children of undocumented parents who will also be greatly affected by…
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Navigator and Assister Training Is Not a One Shot Deal
Now that both state-based and the federally-facilitated marketplaces are well on their way to recruiting and selecting navigators, attention turns to training and support. Effective training is critical to ensuring that the needs of consumers, particularly low-income, hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations, are met. But training is only one element of creating and supporting a high-functioning…
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Annual 50-State Medicaid and CHIP Survey Shows Progress and Gaps
For the third year, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured teamed up with CCF to conduct an annual survey of state Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost-sharing practices. This year’s report, “Getting into Gear for 2014,” clearly shows that states continue to simplify and modernize Medicaid and CHIP in ways that…
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First Focus and Save the Children Issue Report on America’s Children
Actress Jennifer Garner was joined on stage with former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), First Focus President Bruce Lesley, and Save the Children Senior Vice President Mark Shriver on Wednesday, October 10th for the release of America’s Report Card 2012: Children in the United States, a national report card issued by First…
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Data Helps Lead the Way to Reaching Uninsured Children
By Anna Strong, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families recently published an update on our state’s efforts to ensure that all children have health coverage. The best news in “Crossing the Finish Line: Cutting the Red Tape in 2011” is that, despite a recession and an increasing child poverty…