As you begin to gear up for what promises to be a busy fall season in health policy, we want to let you know about new publications and other information on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that we’ve added to the MACPAC website over the summer.
New resources on current issues in Medicaid and CHIP include:
- MACPAC’s analysis projecting when states will exhaust their federal CHIP funds. Under current law, federal CHIP funds are only provided through fiscal year (FY) 2017. This is a matter of some urgency with respect to children’s health coverage and states’ financial stability, given that every state is expected to run out of federal CHIP funding at some point during FY 2018.
- A new issue brief looking at how states’ approaches to financing their share of Medicaid—including state general revenue, contributions from local governments, and health care-related taxes—affect the level of federal Medicaid matching funds.
- The latest fact sheet in our series on federal Medicaid requirements and state options, this one on federal requirements proscribing application, enrollment, and eligibility renewal processes, and flexibilities that states retain to design applications, verify eligibility, and streamline enrollment and renewal. Additional fact sheets cover federal requirements and state options for eligibility, benefits, and provider payment.
- A new issue brief with updated estimates of participation in the Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs), whereby Medicaid pays for dually eligible beneficiaries’ Medicare premiums and in some cases, Medicare cost sharing. The findings update prior studies of MSP participation, the most recent of which is over 10 years old.
- New state-by-state information on Medicaid payment for services provided in residential care settings.
We’ve also posted analyses of the various Medicaid proposals in the House of Representatives’ American Health Care Act (AHCA) and the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) discussion drafts, including:
- state-by-state projections of the financial impact of each bill’s proposed changes to individual states’ Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) allotments;
- per capita cap design choices proposed in the AHCA and BCRA; and
- an updated comparison of historical and projected Medicaid and other health spending with common measures of inflation and income and the AHCA’s and BCRA’s per capita growth factors.
As always, please go to MACStats to find up-to-date Medicaid and CHIP statistics and keep watching the website and MACPAC’S Twitter feed for new products.
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