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This issue brief examines some of the other options policymakers may consider to extend coverage to people in the gap, including increased fiscal incentives for states, a narrower public option, and making people with incomes below the poverty level eligible for enhanced ACA premium subsidies.
Our review of recent literature on premiums and cost-sharing is based on studies and reports published between 2017 and 2021. Our analysis of premiums in post-Affordable Care Act (ACA) Section 1115 waivers (approved under the Obama and Trump administrations) is based on available interim and final waiver evaluations as well as annual and quarterly state data reports posted on Medicaid.gov.
This paper examines the impact on enrollment and families of Arizona's Dec. 21, 2009, decision to freeze enrollment in KidsCare, the state's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The CHIP enrollment freeze, enacted in response to recession-driven state budget pressures, saved the state $12.9 million in FY 2011, but has also resulted in more than 100,000 children being placed on a waiting list for coverage and the loss of $41 million in federal matching funds. Issue…
In the past year, there has been a notable trend of states increasingly utilizing data and technology to modernize, streamline, and gain efficiencies in their Medicaid and CHIP programs. The expanded use of data and technology is not only helping states deal with current budget pressures and decreased administrative resources, but also lays important groundwork for the coverage expansions and new coordinated, streamlined, and technology-driven enrollment process that will go into effect in 2014 under…
As the Nov. 1 start of the Affordable Care Act’s fourth open enrollment period approaches, a new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis estimates that 11.7 million people who remain without health insurance are eligible for Medicaid in their state or for tax credits to purchase health insurance through their state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace. While millions of people have gained coverage under the ACA and the nation’s uninsured rate has fallen to a record low, the…
This brief provides an overview of the many different paths to enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, including paths created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and reviews the available national level data on enrollment through these avenues.
The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) hosts a web briefing to present findings from our 13th annual 50-state survey of Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, enrollment, renewal, and cost-sharing policies. The survey provides a profile of where states stand as of January 2015, one year into the implementation of the major Medicaid provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In response to the need to increase access to testing during the COVID-19 pandemic, recent federal legislation, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, amended by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, creates a new optional Medicaid eligibility pathway, with 100% federal matching funds, for states to cover coronavirus testing and testing-related services for uninsured individuals. This new option is available from March 18, 2020 through the end of the public health emergency period.…
As unemployment claims skyrocket amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, this analysis examines the potential loss of job-based coverage among people in families where someone lost employment between March 1 and May 2 and estimate their eligibility for ACA coverage as of May and January 2021, when most will have exhausted their unemployment benefits.
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…
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