Kaiser/Commonwealth Low-Income Coverage and Access Project

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund are jointly sponsoring The Low-Income Coverage and Access Project to examine how changes in the Medicaid program and the movement toward managed care are affecting health insurance coverage and access to care for low-income populations. This large-scale project, initiated in 1994, has examined the impact of changes in eight states: California, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas. Information is being collected through case studies, surveys and focus groups to assess changes in health insurance coverage and access to care from the perspectives of numerous key stakeholders – – consumers, state officials, managed care plans, and providers.This paper provides a targeted review of Tennessee’s experience providing health care to individuals with special needs under TennCare, its Medicaid managed care initiative. The first part reviews the experience of TennCare Partners, the behavioral health carve-out program created in 1996. The second part reviews how TennCare’s structure affects the disabled and chronically ill.

Report (.pdf)

: Fact Sheet

Fact Sheet available in PDF format.

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A growing trend by state legislatures to pass tough regulations on abortion services begs the questions: Do these rules help to ensure the health and safety of abortion patients and the quality of abortion services? Or, as some abortion rights groups have suggested, are they designed to put abortion providers out of business?

National Committee for Quality Assurance Chief Executive Officer, Margaret O’Kane, National Abortion Federation Committee on Quality Improvement Chair, Dr. Bernard Smith, and other experts discussed the quality of abortion care today, current medical guidelines for care, and whether additional state or federal oversight is needed at an Emerging Issues in Reproductive Health Briefing. A new study that provides the first-ever national data on the quality of abortion care from the patient’s perspective was also released.

• News Release: Women Who Have Abortions Give Care High Marks
• Report
• Toplines/Survey: National Survey of Abortion Patients
• Chart Pack
• News Release

A fact sheet on current facts and statistics on abortion trends, provider profile, and abortion policy, both federal and state.

• Fact Sheet:

California’s Undocumented Latino Immigrants: A Report on Access to Health Care Services

This report provides the results of a survey of undocumented Latino immigrants in two California counties (Fresno and Los Angeles), including their access to health care services, insurance status, health status, and economic circumstances.

• Report

To learn how women view abortion care, the Kaiser Family Foundation commissioned a study of more than 2,200 patients. The Picker Institute, a health care assessment and improvement research organization, interviewed a diverse group of women drawn from 12 abortion providers in a dozen states around the country. The study, the first of its kind on such a large scale, found that patients generally gave abortion providers high marks for quality of care. Women also indicated which areas were most important to them – and how abortion providers could improve upon their services.

Executive Summary

This fact sheet provides an overview of the role of Medicare and Medicaid in serving these beneficiaries; describes the health status of dual Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries, and discusses issues of managed care and access to care.

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The purpose of this issue paper is to explain Federal Medicaid eligibility policy for the low-income elderly population and discusses Federal and State policy options to improve coverage.

• Issue Paper

This fact sheet provides an overview of the role of Medicare and Medicaid in serving these beneficiaries, describes the health status of dual Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries, and discusses issues of managed care and access to care.This fact sheet is a summary of a longer Background Paper (#2132), which is also available.

• Fact Sheet

Employment-Based Health Insurance Coverage and its Decline:The Growing Plight of Low-Wage Workers

This background paper examines the increase in uninsured workers and the growing disparity in health insurance coverage between low- and high-wage workers. While a larger proportion of higher wage workers had health coverage in 1996 than a decade before, coverage deteriorated for low-wage and less-educated workers, especially young men. The paper explores many explanations for this widening disparity. The primary cause is that while higher wage workers have retained access to employer-sponsored coverage, lower wage workers have less health benefits available and (especially when the deterioration in their real wages is taken into account) are less able to pay for coverage when it is offered by their employer.

• Background Paper