Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
With deaths from opioid overdose rising steeply in recent years, and a large segment of the population reporting knowing someone who has been addicted to prescription painkillers, the nation’s opioid epidemic affects people across all incomes, ages, and regions. These resources provide analysis and insight into the epidemic, who it…
This page displays an interactive map of the current status of state decisions on the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Additional Medicaid expansion resources are listed (with links) below the map.
The Utah legislature significantly changed and limited the Medicaid coverage expansion that was adopted by the voters through a ballot initiative in November 2018. This issue brief explains new provisions in Utah’s recently amended Section 1115 Medicaid waiver and the additional amendments that the state has submitted to CMS, including most recently a request for enhanced ACA federal matching funds for an expansion to 138% FPL with an enrollment cap.
As the largest payer of substance use disorder services in the United States, Medicaid plays a central role in state efforts to address the opioid epidemic. In addition to increasing access to addiction treatment services through the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), states are expanding Medicaid addiction treatment services, increasing provider reimbursements, restricting opioid prescribing, and implementing delivery system reforms to improve the quality of treatment services. While many states have been tracking progress and challenges in these efforts, uniqueness of state systems can make it difficult to compare or benchmark across states. This brief draws on analyses provided by the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN), a collaborative effort to analyze data across multiple states to facilitate learning among Medicaid agencies. It profiles the opioid epidemic among the Medicaid population in six states participating in MODRN that also have been hard hit by the opioid epidemic: Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The brief also draws on interviews with officials from the state Medicaid and other health agencies.
As policy debates over the future of access to reproductive and sexual health services heat up at the national and state levels, understanding how these policies are playing out on the ground requires getting beyond the statistics. Earlier this year, KFF, working with Health Management Associates, conducted case studies and…
Millions of current enrollees in stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plans will face premium and other cost increases next year unless they switch to lower-cost plans during the open enrollment period that began Oct. 15 and ends on Dec. 7, a new KFF analysis finds. This includes two-thirds of…
As policy debates over the future of access to reproductive and sexual health services heat up at the national and state levels, this report examines how these policies have played out in five communities across the United States.
This report summarizes the major findings from KFF and HMA case studies in five U.S. communities, highlighting cross-cutting themes and the degree to which low-income women in diverse communities face challenges in accessing reproductive and sexual health care, as well as promising initiatives established by community providers to address barriers and improve access to these basic services.