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This brief reviews the issues and the evidence underpinning five broad areas of policy initiatives that flow from recommendations made in the Institute of Medicine's 2002 report, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Care. Issue Brief (.pdf)
The nation’s safety net financing is fragmented; consequently, providers must knit together resources from many different funding sources to create a stream of revenue to cover the costs of providing a very broad range of services. This report describes those sources of revenue, documenting that nearly 40% of all safety net revenues are from Medicaid. The report also describes challenges that safety net hospitals and health systems are experiencing as they attempt to rebound from…
This report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the American Cancer Society profiles six cancer patients and survivors and the challenges they face to help gauge how the recession and rising unemployment is affecting workers who are most in need of ongoing medical care. The report, "Patients Under Pressure: Profiles of How Families Affected by Cancer are Faring in the Recession," illustrates the kinds of problems such patients face in a recession, including obstacles to…
As Congress debates comprehensive national health reform, the Kaiser Family Foundation has two reports and an updated fact sheet that examine state-level health reform in Massachusetts and the lessons it offers for policymakers in Washington. Consumers’ Experience in Massachusetts: Lessons For National Health Reform and In Pursuit of Affordable Health Care: On the Ground Lessons from Families in Massachusetts, examine the impact of health reform on the lives of ordinary people in the state, including…
As health reform discussions continue, there has been some focus on health coverage for immigrants and how immigrants will be treated under reform plans being considered on Capitol Hill. This issue brief provides an overview of key questions related to immigrants' health coverage and health reform, addressing subjects such as how immigrants receive health coverage, how many of the uninsured are non-citizen immigrants and what would happen to coverage for non-citizen immigrants under current health…
Express Lane Eligibility (ELE) is a new tool available to states to streamline enrollment and renewal of children in Medicaid and CHIP. It allows state Medicaid and CHIP agencies to utilize data and eligibility findings from other public need-based programs, such as Head Start or Food Stamps, and/or tax return data to identify, enroll and recertify children rather than requiring them to re-analyze and determine eligibility under their own rules. A primary goal of this…
With Medicaid set to expand under health reform, the program will begin to reach individuals who have previously had little interaction with the health care system. The data in this brief profile uninsured adults with incomes at or below 133 percent of the poverty level who, because of health reform, will be eligible for Medicaid in 2014 based on income. It focuses on those who received no medical care over a two-year period to help…
On October 3, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in a group of three cases, Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, Douglas v. California Pharmacists Association, and Douglas v. Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. All three cases raise the same issue: whether Medicaid beneficiaries and providers can challenge a state law in federal court on the basis that it violates the federal Medicaid Act and therefore is “preempted” by…
Almost 50 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2010 -- about a million more than in 2009. Who are the uninsured? Why do so many Americans lack coverage? What are the trends in coverage among different segments of the population? What do these trends mean for the health care system and the costs of care? This briefing, co-sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured,…
In order to ensure access to care for limited English proficient residents, there are a number of federal and state laws and policies that compel publicly funded health care programs and activities to provide language access. This report focuses on the language access responsibilities of health care and coverage providers pursuant to federal civil rights laws. Report (.pdf)
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