Pulling it Together: An Actuarial Rorschach Test February 11, 2010 Perspective Drew Altman, Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton My colleagues have worked on this column with me and I invited them to join me as authors. As with pretty much every other discussion of health care going back to the days of Roosevelt, the great reform debate of 2009 (and now 2010)…
Medicaid Coverage and Spending in Health Reform: National and State-By-State Results for Adults at or Below 133% FPL May 1, 2010 Report This analysis, performed by the Urban Institute for the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, shows that the expansion of Medicaid under the health reform law will significantly increase the number of people covered by the program and reduce the uninsured in states across the country, with the federal…
Pulling It Together: Repeal January 6, 2011 Perspective The House will soon vote to repeal the health reform law, the Senate won’t, and the President would veto it if they did. So what does a House vote for repeal mean? It is, of course, a campaign promise kept to the political right. It is also a signal from…
Pop Quiz: Assessing Americans’ Familiarity With the Health Care Law February 1, 2011 Poll Finding The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is coming up on a year old, but in the midst of continuing debate over the merits of the landmark health care overhaul, how well do Americans understand what the new law will actually do? As the 112th Congress prepared to take office and the…
Medicaid Matters: Understanding Medicaid’s Role in Our Health Care System March 1, 2011 Fact Sheet This fact sheet provides key information about the Medicaid program and its role in our health care system and state economies. The nation’s public health insurance program for low-income people is counter-cyclical, expanding during the recent recession to assist millions of individuals and families affected by the loss of jobs…
Massachusetts’ Demonstration to Integrate Care and Align Financing for Dual Eligible Beneficiaries October 1, 2012 Issue Brief Massachusetts is the first state to finalize a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to test CMS’s capitated financial alignment model for beneficiaries who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, with enrollment beginning on April 1, 2013. Starting in 2013, CMS will…
The New Review and Approval Process Rule for Section 1115 Medicaid and CHIP Demonstration Waivers March 1, 2012 Fact Sheet For many years, Section 1115 waivers have been used in the Medicaid program to provide states an avenue to test and implement coverage approaches that do not meet federal program rules, but there have been longstanding concerns about the lack of public input and transparency in the waiver approval process.…
Making Sense of the Census Uninsured Numbers September 19, 2012 Event The Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission and Medicaid and the Uninsured discuss the Census uninsured numbers. The Census Bureau announced that the number of people without health insurance dropped from 50 million to 48.6 million in 2011, marking the first decrease since 2007. That information…
How Much Will Medicaid Physician Fees for Primary Care Rise in 2013? Evidence from a 2012 Survey of Medicaid Physician Fees December 13, 2012 Issue Brief This brief presents 50-state data from the 2012 KCMU/Urban Institute Medicaid Physician Fee Survey. It estimates that average Medicaid fees to qualified physicians for Affordable Care Act primary care services will rise by 73 percent when the primary care fee increase takes effect on January 1, 2013, although there will…
Pulling It Together: Health IN the Economy April 29, 2008 Perspective I am writing this Pulling It Together column about this one chart and its potential interpretations and implications. Source: Key Findings: Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 — April 2008, Kaiser Family Foundation, April 2008. This chart from our most recent tracking poll shows the economy rising as a political issue…