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This issue brief provides an overview of Indiana's new Medicaid waiver program, the Healthy Indiana Plan, which is the first that allows a state to use Medicaid funds to provide a benefit package modeled after a high-deductible plan and health savings account to previously uninsured adults. This piece examines key components of the plan and identifies key issues to consider. Executive Summary (.pdf) Issue Brief (.pdf)
Premium assistance programs use federal and state Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funds to purchase private coverage. Overall, few states have premium assistance programs, but interest in premium assistance remains high. This brief examines six state premium assistance programs (in Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia) that allow families to choose to receive a subsidy to apply to the purchase of private coverage rather than to receive direct Medicaid or SCHIP…
Medicare Advantage plans enrolled a record 9.8 million beneficiaries, more than one in five of the nation’s 44 million people on Medicare as of April 2008. That represents an increase of more than 800,000 beneficiaries in just four months, continuing a period of unprecedented growth for private plans in Medicare since 2003. This issue brief, prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation by Marsha Gold of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., analyzes recent developments in the Medicare…
Research shows that most children and adolescents do not get enough high-quality sleep, and that their sleep times appear to have declined over the last two decades. Coinciding with this trend has been the rise in popularity of new media forms including the Internet, video games, cell phones and DVDs. Because of the immediacy and interactivity of these new technologies, young people are using media at times and in ways that might interfere with sleep…
Employer-provided health insurance is the primary source of insurance coverage in the United States, covering almost 160 million people or more than 90 percent of the non-elderly privately-insured population.1 In recent years, the percentage of firms who offer such benefits has been falling; 69 percent offered health coverage benefits in 2000, whereas 60 percent did the same in 2007.2 Since employers are not required to offer health benefits to their employees, changes in the rate at which…
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an August 17, 2007, directive that would restrict states’ flexibility to continue to apply income disregards when determining eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP coverage for expansions to children above 250 percent of the federal poverty level. This issue brief describes the purpose of income “disregards” (which refer to both income that is excluded and expenses that are deducted from a family’s earnings); how disregards help enable children…
How Private Health Coverage Works: A Primer— 2008 Update This primer explains the role and operations of private health coverage in the United States. Private health coverage is provided under a variety of different arrangements, including health insuring organizations regulated under state law and health plans sponsored by employers and employee organizations that operate under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The primer discusses the fundamental aims of private health coverage and sorts out…
Medicaid in a Declining Economy: Limited Approaches for States to Control Spending This brief analyzes results from its annual 50-state budget surveys of Medicaid directors from 2003 to 2007. The historical results describe how states adopted a wide array of Medicaid cost containment strategies during the last economic downturn and were assisted by the federal government to avoid deeper Medicaid cuts. Issue Brief (.pdf) See related material on this issue
Health Affairs Article: Comparing the Assets of Uninsured Households to Cost Sharing Under High Deductible Health Plans Relatively few uninsured households have enough financial assets to cover the cost-sharing in consumer-driven health plans tied to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), according to this study by Kaiser Family Foundation researchers published as a Health Affairs Web Exclusive on April 15, 2008. Consumer-driven plans generally require enrollees to pay for most health-care expenses themselves until they reach the plan’s relatively high…
This Medicare Part D Data Spotlight examines the variation in 2008 Part D plan coverage, cost sharing and utilization management tools for the 10 prescriptions most commonly used by Medicare beneficiaries, including treatments for cholesterol, cardiovascular health, osteoporosis, dementia, gastrointestinal reflux and ulcers. It looks at data from the 47 stand-alone prescription drug plans available nationwide in 2008. This data spotlight is one in a series analyzing key aspects of the 2008 Medicare Part D…
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