Medicaid Expansions

On February 28th, 2013, Politico reported that Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe had received approval “to take federal Medicaid expansion money and use it to buy private health coverage for low-income residents through the state’s insurance exchange.” This brief explains the legal basis for this decision, as well as the issues that can be expected to arise in using this approach to coverage.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there will be several changes to the Medicaid enrollment process in efforts to simplify it, including a single streamlined application. This report examines the propose paper-based application and 85 current printable Medicaid and CHIP applications, focusing on availability of application assistance, language accessibility, verification of income, verification of citizenship and immigration status and other messages for immigrant families, medical support requirements, and disability screening questions.

This brief summarizes efforts to develop quality of care measures for Medicare-Medicaid enrollees. It provides guidance to states in developing measurement approaches for proposed integrated programs, including assessment of quality in specific domains of integrated care such as long-term services and supports and behavioral health services.

In this article, Alice Weiss examines Oklahoma’s efforts to streamline and modernize Medicaid enrollment. Oklahoma is the only state so far to implement an online application system for Medicaid, and its automated eligibility determination system for Medicaid is among the most modern and efficient nationwide, with the state is expected to achieve a nearly three-to-one return on its investment in 2015.