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Ahead of the third annual Affordable Care Act open enrollment period, the Kaiser Family Foundation has updated and expanded its searchable collection of nearly 300 Health Reform Frequently Asked Questions.
The Trump Administration and new Congress have indicated that they will seek to cap Medicaid financing through a block grant or per capita cap, reduce federal funding for the program, and offer states increased flexibility to manage their programs within this more limited financing structure. The size of the federal reductions as well as which federal program standards would remain in place and what increased flexibility might be provided to states under such proposals would have significant implications. To help inform discussion around increased flexibility, this brief provides an overview of current federal standards and state options in Medicaid and how states have responded to these options in four key areas: eligibility, benefits, premiums and cost sharing, and provider payments and delivery systems.
In this Policy Insight, Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman discusses the need for community based outreach to enroll the long term uninsured.
In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses new Kaiser Family Foundation survey findings about how fear of enforcement of immigration laws may be affecting Latino enrollment in the Affordable Care Act. All previous columns by Drew Altman are available online.
This issue brief provides state level CHIP enrollment data, adding the June 2013 period. In June 2013, over 5.7 million children were enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP.) Enrollment in June 2013 increased by 190,453 or by 3.4 percent, compared to one year earlier. Since 2009, annual rates of growth have remained fairly steady, ranging between 3.2 percent and 3.8 percent. In contrast, during the height of the Great Recession, enrollment increased annually by 7.8 to 10 percent. Overall, CHIP enrollment continued to increase, but growth slow to the lowest rates since the start of the Recession as the economic conditions continued to improve. CHIP programs, along with state Medicaid programs continue to play a critical role in assuring health coverage for uninsured children.
On January 1, 2014, many key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will start to go into effect, including the expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults and the launch of new Medicaid eligibility and enrollment processes, which are designed to move toward a coordinated enrollment system across health coverage programs, including Medicaid, CHIP, and the new Health Insurance Marketplaces. Over the past year, states have made steady and significant progress preparing for these changes, but readiness varies considerably as 2014 nears, and implementation work and ongoing process improvements will continue into the foreseeable future. To provide greater insight into the status of implementation, this report provides an overview of key state Medicaid eligibility and enrollment policies slated to go into effect based on data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
This report provides an in depth examination of the changes taking place in state Medicaid programs across the country. The findings in this report are drawn from the 15th annual budget survey of Medicaid officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and Health Management Associates (HMA), with the support of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. This report highlights policy changes implemented in state Medicaid programs in FY 2015 and those planned for implementation in FY 2016 based on information provided by the nation’s state Medicaid Directors. Key areas covered include changes in eligibility and enrollment, delivery and payment system reforms, provider payment rates, and covered benefits (including prescription drug policies).
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.
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This issue brief analyzes spending and enrollment data made available by CMS through the MBES. It breaks out spending and enrollment for the new adult group (Group VIII) that gained coverage in states that adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion. It looks at spending and enrollment for the new adult group in calendar year 2014, putting such data in the context of overall Medicaid spending and enrollment and examines trends across expansion states.
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