Pulling It Together: A Public Opinion Surprise April 4, 2011 Perspective Medicaid is the nation’s primary health insurance program for low-income people and people with disabilities, covering more than 60 million people this year. And it’s about to get a lot of attention: it’s likely to be a prime target for spending reductions by “deficit hawks” in debate over the budget;…
Implications Of A Federal Block Grant Program For Medicaid April 1, 2011 Issue Brief This issue brief examines the broad implications of converting Medicaid to block grant financing, one of several ideas that have been put forth to help reduce the federal deficit. The paper, which does not analyze any specific proposal, notes that switching to block grant financing would fundamentally alter the Medicaid…
Medicaid’s Role for Black Americans May 1, 2011 Fact Sheet This fact sheet examines Medicaid’s role for black Americans. It includes data on Medicaid’s coverage of black Americans and the program’s impact on their access to care, as well as the impacts of the recent recession and the coming expansion of Medicaid under health reform on enrollment in Medicaid among…
Enhanced Medicaid Match Rates Expire in June 2011 June 1, 2011 Fact Sheet This fact sheet discusses the role played by the enhanced federal Medicaid matching funds available to states through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and the implications for state Medicaid programs as that extra assistance expires June 30, 2011. States used the ARRA enhanced Medicaid funding to…
Pulling It Together: Are We Headed for a Government Takeover of Health Care? July 29, 2011 Perspective Remember the “government takeover of the health care system” argument that critics of the health reform law have used? Well, last week the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published the latest projections of health spending in the journal Health Affairs. Attention focused mainly…
Pulling it Together: Business and Health Care Costs October 11, 2011 Perspective Hidden away on page 218 of our annual Employer Health Benefits Survey is a table that shows what employers think of the main strategies they have to control health care costs. More specifically, the table shows what the person in the firm responsible for its health benefits thinks, which is…
A Guide to the Supreme Court’s Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law January 30, 2012 Issue Brief With the Supreme Court preparing to hear oral arguments about challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act in March 2012, this Kaiser Family Foundation brief serves as a primer on the pending case, which challenges the constitutionality both of the law’s individual mandate that requires most Americans to obtain health…
Pulling it Together: A Primer on Health in the Election September 28, 2010 Perspective There is a lot of talk in polling and political circles and some speculation in the media about the role of health reform in the midterm elections. We regularly measure what the public thinks about health reform and you see reports from our monthly tracking polls about that. But whether those…
Medicaid and CHIP Coverage In An Era of Recession and Health Reform December 31, 2010 Event Despite tight budgets, nearly all states maintained or made targeted expansions or improvements in their Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) eligibility and enrollment rules in 2010, preserving the programs’ important role of providing coverage to millions of low-income Americans who otherwise lack affordable options. This stability in large…
Medicaid Spending Growth and the Great Recession, 2007-2009 February 1, 2011 Fact Sheet This fact sheet examines how the recent recession drove up Medicaid enrollment as millions of Americans lost jobs and income, and how that increase in enrollment has been the primary cause of the increase in overall Medicaid spending. Fact Sheet (.pdf)