Federal Judge Strikes Down Work Requirements for Medicaid Recipients U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the state of Kentucky from requiring Medicaid recipients to work to retain benefits. Boasberg also discontinued the same requirements in Arkansas in his ruling. This is the second time in nine months that Boasberg has ruled against the work requirement. … Continue Reading ›
Quite a few of the healthcare policy decisions made by the Trump administration have been mired in partisanship and acrimony, but this is certainly not the case with a proposed rule recently published on the Federal Register. The rule in question involves the expansion of health reimbursement agreements, known as HRAs, that would benefit Americans… Continue Reading ›
UnitedHealthCare has announced that it plans to leave Iowa’s Medicaid program over the next few months, leaving as many as 425,000 residents without a healthcare insurer. In Dubuque, healthcare providers are concerned about the impact not only on their clients but also on their business. On Friday, March 29, UnitedHealthCare announced that it was pulling… Continue Reading ›
U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates struck down a small business health insurance plan supported by the Trump administration. The judge indicated that association health plans were designed as an “end-run” around the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This was the second decision in a week striking two efforts by Republicans to change major components… Continue Reading ›
Since 2016, Tennessee Has Dropped Insurance for Over 100,000 Children Tennessee parents are discovering that their children may have been dropped from two state government insurance programs in the Volunteer State: TennCare and CoverKids. It’s estimated that at least 128,000 children were removed from the programs over the past three years and many of them… Continue Reading ›
The Justice Department, acting on behalf of President Trump and his administration, recently announced that it supported declaring the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional – an unexpected move even among Republican lawmakers. Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and others close to him appear to have convinced President Trump that he may be… Continue Reading ›
A report released in May by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) found that about 3 million more people will be uninsured in 2019 than originally projected in September 2017. According to the report, the CBO revised its methods for estimating the impact that elimination of the individual mandate… Continue Reading ›
CMS Reports 11.8 Million People Signed Up for Health Insurance Using Exchanges in 2018 Final numbers for the 2018 open enrollment period indicate that about 11.8 million people used federal or state marketplaces to sign up for health insurance. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a final report in April tallying the… Continue Reading ›
On February 2, Indiana became the second state in the U.S. to get approval from the Trump administration to add work requirements to its Medicaid program. Kentucky was granted a waiver to add work requirements to its Medicaid program last month, a historic but controversial move that drew criticism from patient advocacy groups. Indiana, which… Continue Reading ›
Americans who were hoping to hear about healthcare during President Trump’s first State of the Union address were disappointed Tuesday night as the president chose instead to focus his speech on the economy, immigration and international policy. Notably absent from Trump’s lengthy address was any mention of how his administration plans to address healthcare reform…. Continue Reading ›