Key Issues in Children's Health Coverage

This brief reviews children's coverage today and examines what is at stake for children's coverage in upcoming debates around funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and restructuring of Medicaid financing to a block grant or per capita cap. Following decades of steady progress, largely driven by expansions in Medicaid and CHIP, the children's uninsured rate has reached an all-time low of 5%. Medicaid and CHIP are key sources of coverage for our nation's children, covering nearly four in ten (39%) children overall and over four in ten (44%) children with special health care needs. Medicaid serves as the base of coverage for the nation's low-income children and covered 36.8 million children in fiscal year 2015. CHIP, which had 8.4 million children enrolled in fiscal year 2015, complements Medicaid by covering uninsured children above Medicaid eligibility limits.There is much at stake for children's coverage in upcoming debates. New legislative authority is needed to continue CHIP funding beyond September 30, 2017. In addition, the Administration and Republican leaders in Congress have called for repeal and replacement of the ACA and restructuring of Medicaid financing to a block grant or per capita cap. Loss of CHIP funding, repeal of the ACA, and capping Medicaid financing all have the potential to reverse the coverage gains achieved to date and increase the number of uninsured children. In addition, rollbacks in coverage for parents could contribute to coverage losses among children and increased financial instability among families.Reductions in children's coverage would lead to reduced access to care and other long-term effects for children and increase financial pressure on states and providers. Reductions in children's coverage would result in fewer children accessing neededcare, including preventive services such as well child visits and immunizations. Research also suggests that reductions in children's coverage could have broader long-term negative effects on their health, education, and financial success as adults. In addition, loss of CHIP funding and reductions in federal Medicaid financing would create funding gaps that would increase financial pressure on states and providers

Community Care of North Carolina: Putting Health Reform Ideas Into Practice in Medicaid

Summarizes assessments of how an enhanced medical home model of care that involves local nonprofit community networks and emphasizes care coordination, disease and care management, and quality improvement has affected cost savings and quality of care

Florida Medicaid Reform Waiver: Early Findings and Current Status

Summarizes preliminary findings from a program in which Medicaid beneficiaries choose from managed care plans under a defined contribution model. Looks at access to prescription drugs, providers' participation in Medicaid, and beneficiaries' awareness

Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care for Low-Income Non-Citizen Adults

Analyzes heath insurance coverage and access for low-income non-citizen adults, and examines the obstacles this population faces in obtaining coverage and receiving care

Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care for Low-Income Non-Citizen Children

Examines heath coverage and access to care for low-income non-citizen children, and looks at the challenges they face in obtaining health insurance and accessing care

Health and Health Coverage in the South: A Data Update

With its recent adoption of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion to adults, Louisiana became the 32nd state to move forward with the expansion, and the 7th of the 17 states that make up the American South to expand. However, within the South, which has high rates of chronic disease and poor health outcomes, the majority of states still have not adopted the Medicaid expansion. The ACA and its Medicaid expansion offer important opportunities to expand access to health coverage, particularly in the South, where Medicaid and CHIP eligibility levels across groups have lagged behind other regions for many years.1 While many factors contribute to chronic disease and poor health outcomes, expanding health coverage can provide an important step in improving health by supporting individuals' ability to access preventive and primary care and ongoing treatment of health conditions. This brief provides key data on the South and the current status of health and health coverage in the South to provide greater insight into the health needs in the region and the potential coverage gains that may be achieved through the ACA. State specific data for the indicators presented in the brief are available in Tables 1 through 6

Polarimetric Control of Reflective Metasurfaces

This letter addresses the synthesis of reflective cells approaching a given desired Floquet's scattering matrix. This work is motivated by the need to obtain much finer control of reflective metasurfaces by controlling not only their co-polarized reflection but also their cross-coupling behavior. The demonstrated capability will enable more powerful design approaches -involving all field components in phase and magnitude- and consequently better performance in applications involving reflective metasurfaces. We first expose some fundamental theoretical constraints on the cell scattering parameters. Then, a successful procedure for controlling all four scattering parameters by applying parallelogram and trapezoid transformations to square patches is presented, considering both normal and oblique incidence

Health Coverage and Access to Care for Hispanics in "New Growth Communities" and "Major Hispanic Centers"

Examines healthcare coverage for Hispanics when they migrate from cities to smaller urban and rural areas, and encounter roadblocks such as language barriers, lack of insurance, and access to health clinics

A Foundation for Health Reform: Findings of a 50 State Survey 2009

Surveys state actions on Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plans and analyzes advances and setbacks in expanding coverage for low-income children and parents as well as disparities between the two groups. Discusses legislative and economic factors