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This brief describes Medicaid’s role for nearly 7 million nonelderly adults with disabilities living in the community to help inform the debate about the American Health Care Act’s proposals to end enhanced federal funding under the ACA and reduce federal Medicaid funding under a per capita cap.
This issue brief identifies key lessons learned from how four states (Missouri, Ohio, New Mexico, Rhode Island) are connecting people leaving the criminal justice system to Medicaid coverage and services, with a focus on medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and supports for people with opioid use disorder. It builds on previous briefs that assessed state efforts to connect people involved in the justice system to Medicaid coverage. It is based on interviews conducted in late 2018 and early 2019 with state Medicaid, behavioral health, and corrections officials in the four states and in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, as well as interviews with managed care organizations, providers, and advocates in those states and published information on the states’ experiences.
A federal district court has set aside the HHS Secretary’s approval of Medicaid waivers with work and reporting requirements and other eligibility and enrollment restrictions in Kentucky and Arkansas. For context as this all develops, we asked MaryBeth Musumeci, Associate Director at the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, three questions about the implications of the decisions.
This 17th annual survey of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC) provides data on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost sharing policies as of January 2019.
To financially qualify for Medicaid long-term services and supports (LTSS), an individual must have a low income and limited assets. In response to concerns that these rules could leave a spouse without adequate means of support when a married individual needs LTSS, Congress created the spousal impoverishment rules in 1988. Originally, these rules required states to protect a portion of a married couple’s income and assets to provide for the “community spouse’s” living expenses when determining nursing home financial eligibility, but gave states the option to apply the rules to home and community-based services (HCBS) waivers.
Section 2404 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed the spousal impoverishment rules to treat Medicaid HCBS and institutional care equally from January 2014 through December 2018. Congress subsequently extended Section 2404 through December 2019. This issue brief answers key questions about the spousal impoverishment rules, presents 50-state data from a 2018 Kaiser Family Foundation survey about state policies and future plans in this area, and considers the implications if Congress does not further extend Section 2404.
Recently there have been declines in Medicaid and CHIP enrollment, reversing a previous trend of increases following implementation of the ACA. Experiences in some states suggest that renewal process requirements and growing use of periodic eligibility checks may be contributing to disenrollment among people who are still eligible for coverage as well as increased churn in coverage. This brief reviews current rules and state processes related to renewal and periodic eligibility reviews and discusses potential process issues that may be contributing to Medicaid and CHIP enrollment declines.
This report provides data on state Medicaid and CHIP eligibility levels and presents a snapshot of key aspects of state enrollment and renewal procedures in place during the COVID-19 PHE based on information from the 19th annual survey of Medicaid and CHIP program officials in the 50 states and DC.
Our 18th annual 50-state survey of Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost sharing policies provides data on policies in place as of January 2020 and serves as a benchmark against which we can measure state actions to respond to COVID-19 and the economic crisis.
States used a number of Medicaid emergency authorities to address the COVID-19 public health emergency. Between March 2020 and July 2021 we tracked details on Medicaid Disaster Relief State Plan Amendments (SPAs), other Medicaid and CHIP SPAs, and other state-reported administrative actions; Section 1115 Waivers; Section 1135 Waivers; and 1915 (c) Waiver Appendix K strategies. This resource was last updated July 1, 2021 and is no longer being updated.
A new KFF analysis shows that lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 60 could improve the affordability of coverage for people who are already insured and expand coverage to over a million of the nation’s 30 million uninsured. Such a policy could provide a path to Medicare coverage for up to 11.
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