Medicaid expansion
lborkowski | March 13, 2017House Republicans have released –and rushed through two committees—the American Health Care Act, which would result in destabilized individual insurance markets and millions of people losing health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet released its estimate of the likely impacts, but an analysis from authors at the Brookings/USC Schaeffer Initiative calculates it would result in 15 million people losing coverage. The AHCA contains provisions addressing both private and public insurance; I’m most concerned about the impacts on Medicaid, which would shift substantial healthcare…
lborkowski | March 6, 2017A policy brief about Congressional Republicans’ bill to replace the Affordable Care Act has two Medicaid provisions that could prove seriously detrimental to public health and states’ finances: Gutting the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, and changing the current Medicaid financing structure. A Center on Budget and Policy Priority analysis of these two changes calculates that they would shift hundreds of billions in costs from the federal government to the states over the next 10 years. I’ll explain what these two policies are, but first I want to highlight a few things about the Medicaid program.
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lborkowski | January 16, 2017As Congressional Republicans continue taking steps toward repealing the Affordable Care Act without providing a detailed, workable plan to replace it, more people are speaking out against ACA repeal.
GOP Governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan are speaking to journalists about how the ACA’s Medicaid expansion has helped their states. Governor Snyder explained to The Detroit News that the state accepted the Medicaid expansion but added requirements for recipients earning between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty level, and that the program is working and has the potential…
kkrisberg | October 13, 2016If you look at the numbers, there’s no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is making a positive difference. In fact, just last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the nation’s uninsured rate had hit a record low. At the same time, the health reform law wasn’t intended as a silver bullet and a number of problems remain. One of those problems is known as “churning.”
“Churning” describes changes in a person’s insurance coverage over time and it’s an issue that can have a significant impact on a patient’s continuity of care and health status. Of course, changes in insurance coverage are…
lborkowski | September 12, 2016The latest findings on US health insurance coverage from the first quarter of the current year continue what is becoming a familiar story: The portion of the US population without health insurance continues to decline. This year, the estimate from CDC's National Center for Health Statistics is that 8.6% of US people of any age were without health insurance at the time of interview from January - March 2016.
As it did last year, the report highlights the difference between states that have accepted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and those that have not:
In Medicaid expansion…
lborkowski | August 8, 2016In MMWR, Brian Ward and Lindsey Black of the National Center for Health Statistics report that 25.7% of US adults have been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). In their analysis of data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey, they examined rates of diagnoses of arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, coronary heart disease, diabetes, hepatitis, hypertension, stroke, or weak/failing kidneys.
It's not surprising that MCC prevalence varied by age; just 7.3% of those aged 18-44 had multiple chronic conditions, compared to 32.1% of those aged 45-64 and 61.6% of those aged 65 and up…
kkrisberg | May 31, 2016Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the number of Texans without health insurance. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of uninsured Texas residents has dropped by 30 percent. That means the Texas uninsured rate has hit its lowest point in nearly two decades.
In a new issue brief from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, researchers report that the Texas uninsured rate dropped from 26 percent in September 2013 — before the ACA’s first open enrollment period — to 18 percent as of March 2016. The decline was observed among every age, income and ethnic group…
kkrisberg | March 25, 2016Here’s what states get when they expand Medicaid: more savings, more revenue, more jobs, more access to care for their communities.
That’s the conclusion from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issue brief released this month that compared the differences between states that chose to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act and those that opted out. Under the health reform law, the federal government will pay the entire cost of expanding state Medicaid programs up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level through 2016, phasing down to 90 percent by 2020. It’s a pretty good…
kkrisberg | October 22, 2015More good news from the Affordable Care Act: Since it became the law of the land, uninsurance disparities between white, black and Hispanic residents have narrowed significantly.
In a study published this month in the journal Health Affairs, researchers found that by the fourth quarter of 2014, the uninsurance rate for Hispanic adults had fallen to 31.8 percent from about 40 percent in the third quarter of 2013. During the same time period, uninsurance among black adults declined from 25.5 percent to 17.2 percent, while uninsurance among white adults fell from 14.8 percent to 10.5 percent.…
lborkowski | August 17, 2015The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics has published an early release of findings on US health insurance coverage from January - March 2015, and the numbers show a continued decline in the number of US residents without health insurance. The report presents findings from the National Health Insurance Survey, and the headline estimate is that just 9.2% of people (29 million) were uninsured at the time of the interview. That's down from the same time period last year, when 13.4% lacked insurance coverage.
The report notes that since 2010, the decline in uninsurance among adults ages 18…
kkrisberg | May 12, 2015More than $30 million in Arkansas, $25.8 million in Kentucky, $105.5 million in Washington and $180 million in Michigan. That’s how much money just four states during just one fiscal year saved under their newly expanded Medicaid programs.
A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) summarizes the benefits of Medicaid expansions on uninsurance rates, state health care spending and uncompensated care, finding that “contrary to critics’ claims that Medicaid expansion is financially unsustainable for states, there is increasing evidence that expansion has saved states…
cmonforton | December 30, 2014While we take a breather during this holiday season, we’re re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on January 6, 2014.
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
Now that it’s 2014, millions more people in the US have health insurance coverage (either Medicaid or private insurance), thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In the weeks ahead, many of the newly insured will be visiting healthcare providers to address ongoing health concerns. The Washington Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar and Karen Tumulty highlighted one person with a pent-up demand for healthcare, Sharon Kelly of…
lborkowski | November 17, 2014On Saturday, Healthcare.gov opened for enrollment in 2015 health insurance plans, and so far it’s proceeding without the horrific technical problems that greeted would-be enrollees last year. This year, as will be the case in future years, the enrollment window is just three months long. People can renew the coverage they had last year or choose a new plan. Those with incomes of between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (in 2014, $11,670 - $46,680 for a one-person household, $23,850 - $95,400 for a household of four) are eligible for subsidies to help them afford premiums.
The Obama…
lborkowski | September 16, 2014New findings from CDC's National Health Interview Survey show the uninsured rate at its lowest level since the agency started tracking this statistic 17 years ago. In the first quarter of 2014, an estimated 13.1% of the US population did not have health insurance at the time of interview. That figure was 15.4% in 1997, and rose to 16.0% in 2010 before it began falling.
Vox's Sarah Kliff points out that the percentage of US children without health insurance has dropped more dramatically than that of the US population as a whole, from 13.9% in 1997 to 6.6% in 2014. Much of the credit for that…
kkrisberg | May 15, 2014$569 million. That’s how much revenue community health centers will miss out on because their state legislators decided not to expand Medicaid eligibility. The loss means that many community health centers will continue to struggle to serve all those in need, others will have to cut back on services and some could be forced to shut down altogether.
“In some ways, it’s status quo,” Peter Shin told me. “But for many of them, it’s a bleak status quo.”
Shin co-authored a recent report on the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on uninsured patients at community health centers, zeroing in on…
lborkowski | April 1, 2014Yesterday was the end of the first open enrollment period for people buying private health insurance plans on the federal and state-run health insurance exchanges. President Obama announced today that more than seven million people enrolled in private plans, helped by a surge of signups in the few days before the deadline. Many of these enrollees (those with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level) were able to get subsidies to decrease their premium costs.
Severe technical problems plagued Healthcare.gov -- the federally run site where residents of states not creating…
lborkowski | January 6, 2014Now that it’s 2014, millions more people in the US have health insurance coverage (either Medicaid or private insurance), thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In the weeks ahead, many of the newly insured will be visiting healthcare providers to address ongoing health concerns. The Washington Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar and Karen Tumulty highlighted one person with a pent-up demand for healthcare, Sharon Kelly of Louisville, Kentucky:
Kelly said that having Medicaid coverage on Jan. 1 “is a huge relief,” adding, “I’m a redhead and I used to live in California. I have things on my skin that are…
lborkowski | November 19, 2013I've written before about the importance of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and about the role of community health centers in delivering primary care to underserved patients. With roughly half of the states declining the now-optional Medicaid expansion and an uncertain federal funding environment, though, the extent to which health centers will be able to serve the newly insured is up in the air. A new report from the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative puts some numbers on the variability. Under different Medicaid expansion and funding scenarios…
lborkowski | August 12, 2013The Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun writes about Obamacare implementation, and finds that it differs greatly between Maryland and Virginia, which share a border but have very different attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act. Both have large uninsured populations (around 800,000 in Maryland and 844,000 in Virginia), but Virginia’s opposition to the law means it’s getting far less federal money and leaving its poorest residents with fewer options for affordable insurance coverage.
The lawmakers who wrote the ACA included two main ways to help those without employer-sponsored health insurance…
lborkowski | February 7, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Tim Dickson in Rolling Stone: The NRA vs. America
Tammie Smith of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Reporting on Health: Where you live determines how long you live
Leah Garces at Food Safety News: Why We Haven't Seen Inside a Broiler Chicken Factory Farm in a Decade (via this Superbug post, which has links to more related stories)
Charles Kenney at Small World (Businessweek): How the CIA is Hurting the Fight Against Polio
Sarah Kliff at Wonkblog (Washington Post): How Ohio's Republican governor sold the state on expanding Medicaid