NEW MEDICAID WAIVER TRACKER AVAILABLE
Are you trying to keep track of all the potential Medicaid waivers that are pending or approved? The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a new interactive Medicaid Waiver Tracker. To learn more about this tracker, check out our news item.
Many of these waivers look at states adding work requirements to their Medicaid programs. Last week we highlighted a new blog post we created which captures all the news on this topic. We continue to add new resources to this blog post. This week we added two new fact sheets from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) on how work requirements would harm older adults and people with substance use disorders as well as a link to the Kaiser Medicaid waiver tracker.
CBPP will be hosting a webinar as part of their Health Reform: Beyond the Basics series on Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 2:30-3:30 PM ET. This webinar will address the “Marketplace Appeals Process.” This webinar was originally scheduled for February 1 but needed to be rescheduled. If you previously registered for that webinar, you do not need to do anything further. However, in the event you did not register before, you can register here. AAHD has partnered with CBPP on a project called the Consumer Assistance Coordination Hub (CACH). The CACH supports individuals and groups that provide enrollment assistance. To read more about this project, check out our blog post.
CBPP also has two new blog posts reacting to recent actions by the Trump Administration. The first is on the Trump budget proposal and what it would mean for healthcare coverage under the ACA and Medicaid. The second blog post is on a proposed rule which would allow for greater use of short-term health plans. Comments to this proposed rule are due April 23. For more on the proposed rule for short-term health plans, check out the blog post from the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR).
Idaho has a state-based marketplace and is considering allowing insurance companies to offer plans on the marketplace which would not comply with the ACA in a number of ways, including allowing premiums to be set based on health status, waiting periods for pre-existing conditions and not covering the 10 Essential Health Benefits required by the ACA. The CHIR has written a blog post about what the federal government could do to step in and prevent Idaho from allowing these plans which violate the ACA.
With open enrollment concluded, the Community Catalyst outreach project which we are working on is highlighting the benefits of coverage and how to effectively use your insurance (with tools like the graphic below). To learn more about what’s available through this project, check out our blog post.
If you’re interested in learning more about coverage to care for people with disabilities, check out our fact sheet entitled “Tips for ACA Enrollees: From Coverage to Care – Persons with Disabilities.” As this fact sheet is aimed at consumers, we have also translated it into Spanish.
Join the NASUAD Disability Business Acumen Center on February 28, 2018 from 12:30-1:30 PM ET as they present a webinar entitled “Stories from the Field. Lessons of Sharing from the Disability Network Business Acumen Learning Collaborative.” This webinar will be presented by NASUAD along with state learning collaboratives from Missouri, New Hampshire, New York and Texas as they describe how they have shared experiences to help each other advance solutions to resolve common issues. If you want to learn more about the state learning collaboratives, you can do so on the Business Acumen Center website. On the website, you can also find archives of their prior webinars.
The CDC funded Disability Research and Dissemination Center has announced new GRANT OPPORTUNITIES for FY 18. Please read more about the seven (7) DRDC research opportunities at he DRDC website. Applications are due by 5PM EST on Monday, March 5, 2018.
The University of Washington Healthy Aging Rehabilitation Research Training Center (RRTC) has released a plain language summary entitled “Living with a Neurological Condition or Injury: The Power of Social Support.”
Are you looking for local partners to help with outreach to the disability community? The NDNRC has Community Outreach Collaboratives (COCs) which work to increase collaborations in the community, dissemination and outreach efforts and enrollment of people with disabilities in the ACA marketplace. You can find a COC, on the COC page of our website.
Archives of our weekly updates are available on the NDNRC website.