When debating the Medicaid expansion in 2013, the Ohio legislature appropriately questioned whether expanding the program to non-disabled adults would be done so efficiently, supporting the health, welfare, and economy of Ohio and its citizens. The subsequent policy process reflected this focus on program performance, including a legislative committee tour around Ohio to understand the...
Author: Loren Anthes
December 16, 2016
The Gift of the MAGI?
Medicaid is big and complicated. As I have written about before, the intertangled state and federal monies, processes, and policies that comprise the Medicaid program vary greatly from state to state and, as the saying goes, if you’ve seen one state Medicaid program, you’ve seen one state Medicaid program. With that said, Medicaid occupies a...
September 28, 2016
JMOC: Preliminary Report from the Actuary
It has been a couple months since the last Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee (JMOC) hearing, and the latest meeting covered a lot of ground in a five-hour-plus session. The majority of JMOC dealt with the behavioral health redesign, including testimony from providers and the administration. If you want to learn more about what was shared...
September 15, 2016
Census Review: The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Uninsured
The Center for Community Solutions team has been analyzing the implications of the latest U.S. Census information. To learn more about this data more broadly, please click here to see the blog post by Kate Warren. With that said, I wanted to dive a bit more deeply into one set of metrics around the uninsured...
August 31, 2016
Digging into Ohio Medicaid’s SFY16 Report
This month, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) submitted its Annual Report to the governor. The document, which has been released each year since State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2014, provides an overview of the initiatives (and the related messaging) behind some of the work of ODM. As we wait for the final budget from Governor...
August 10, 2016
Marketplace Take-Up Rates in Northeast Ohio: Coverage Growth and Coverage Gaps
With 20 million more Americans with healthcare coverage just six years after its passage, it is undeniable that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had a profound impact on the uninsured rate in the U.S. and here in Northeast Ohio. Due to the combination of Medicaid extension and the Federally-facilitated Marketplace, Ohio...
July 8, 2016
Healthy Ohio Waiver Released
On June 30, the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) submitted its application for the legislatively required 1115 Demonstration Waiver known as “Healthy Ohio” to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Throughout the state development process, we have written and posted about Healthy Ohio in order to address our concerns and questions regarding...
June 28, 2016
JMOC: Paying for Value
The Governor’s Office of Health Transformation (OHT) has made the transition to value-based payment its main focus since it was created in the beginning of the Kasich Administration. Now, before the budgetary swan song for this governor, many of the seeds planted in those early stages are starting to bear fruit and OHT is ramping...
June 3, 2016
JMOC: Redesign Update and Panel Discussion
The Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee (JMOC) had a lengthy discussion on May 26th regarding alcohol and drug addiction. During the meeting, which featured a panel of experts in the field, there were two main points of conversation. First, there was a “status update” by Dr. Mark Hurst, Medical Director of the Ohio Department of Mental...
May 18, 2016
An Update on the Extension of Medicaid
Ohio’s Medicaid extension has received a lot of scrutiny from the media, policymakers, and policy experts since its implementation in 2014. This scrutiny has only increased in the past few months during Governor Kasich’s Presidential run and as the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) finalizes its statutorily required 1115 demonstration waiver, Healthy Ohio. While many...