This fact sheet provides an overview of the Medicaid program’s increasing reliance on managed care to deliver services.

• Fact Sheet

Low-income women’s high rate of health problems and limited economic resources make access to health care and adequate health insurance coverage particularly important. Health coverage, whether through the private sector or publicly through Medicaid, has been demonstrated to improve access to care for low-income women. However, obtaining coverage is not easy or even possible for many women. Job-based insurance is not always an option for low-income women, despite their high workforce participation. Assistance is available to some women through Medicaid, but the program s restrictive income and categorical requirements leave millions ineligible and often uninsured. This fact sheet presents coverage rates for low-income women ages 18 to 64, highlights subgroups of women at particular risk of being uninsured, and examines changes in coverage from 1994 to 1998.

• Fact Sheet

Access to health coverage is a challenge for millions of low-income women. Because they are more likely to be low-wage workers and work in industries that don’t offer benefits, access to job-based coverage is often problematic. Avenues for assistance are available to some through Medicaid. However, despite the program s broadened focus on children and pregnant women, restrictive income and categorical requirements still leave millions of women ineligible and often uninsured. Recent changes in public and private health and welfare policies have had a disproportionate impact on low-income women and have resulted in increased numbers of women who lack coverage. This report, created for a Capitol Hill briefing series on women’s health issues, reviews the challenges facing low-income women and assesses the impact on health coverage of policy changes associated with the 1996 federal welfare reform law, tracing changes in coverage between 1994 and 1998.

• Report

This study is the second in a biennial series of studies examining both the amount and the nature of television’s sexual messages, paying special attention to references to such issues as contraception, safer sex, and waiting to have sex. (The prior report is publication #1458.) The current study also examines any changes that have occurred in the presentation of sexual messages on television over the last two years. The study looked at 1,114 programs from the 1999/00 television season across ten different channels, representing broadcast, public, cable, independent, and premium channels. The full report is available separately as publication #3088.

• Executive Summary

This study is the second in a biennial series of studies examining both the amount and the nature of television’s sexual messages, paying special attention to references to such issues as contraception, safer sex, and waiting to have sex. (The prior report is publication #1458.) The current study also examines any changes that have occurred in the presentation of sexual messages on television over the last two years. The study looked at 1,114 programs from the 1999/00 television season across ten different channels, representing broadcast, public, cable, independent, and premium channels.

• Report

The report reveals that the total number of children enrolled in state CHIP programs had grown to 2.3 million by June 2000, showing a steady increase in enrollment. The report is part of a larger project to track Medicaid and CHIP enrollment in all 50 states.

This Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard School of Public Health survey, conducted immediately after the 2000 Presidential election, finds that health care issues ranked near the top of voters priorities for spending the surplus. Medicare ranked among the top three priorities, along with education and Social Security, and ahead of paying off the national debt and cutting taxes. Education ranked first. The survey also found that voters support patients rights legislation and some action to help the uninsured. However, the survey found wide differences between Republican and Democratic voters that will complicate the ability of the next President and Congress to forge any consensus on health care priorities.

• Topline

In 1997, Kaiser Permanente launched the Child Health Plan to provide subsidized health insurance for low income California children not eligible for Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) or Healthy Families (California’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program). As part of a broader evaluation of the Child Health Plan funded jointly by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation, these reports provide findings from a survey of low income parents who were eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families but applied to the Child Health Plan instead and were denied coverage because their incomes were too high. The study was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California at San Francisco.

The issue paper discusses the enrollment process from the perspectives of both beneficiaries and participating plans in nine states with mandatory Medicaid managed care programs: California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Oregon.

• Issue Paper

Teens and young adults face many pressures and decisions involving alcohol, drugs, and sexual activity decisions that often occur simultaneously. Almost one quarter of sexually active young people aged 15-24 report having sex without a condom because they were drinking or using drugs at the time. These findings are from a new national survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and released at a conference, Dangerous Liaisons: Substance Abuse and Sexual Behavior, sponsored by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

• Toplines/Survey