Medicaid - CT Health Policy

Medicaid outreach recommendations

By Ellen Andrews | December 3, 2012 |

Small grants, engaging an army of trusted community messengers, ubiquitous marketing, and robust monitoring will be critical to enrolling the estimated 130,000 newly eligible CT Medicaid members in January 2014, according to a report by the CT Health Policy Project. Best opportunities for outreach include providers, current HUSKY members, faith-based communities, connecting with employers and…

Who is coming into LIA?

By Ellen Andrews | November 20, 2012 |

Today’s CT Mirror asks the question – who are the 37,000 new enrollees in the Low Income Adult Program? LIA was created just over a year ago as an option under the Affordable Care Act. CT shifted our fully-state-funded SAGA program into Medicaid, getting a 50% federal match, and re-named it LIA. When the program…

Medicaid Council update

By Ellen Andrews | October 14, 2012 |

Lots of good news at Friday’s MAPOC meeting. DSS has significantly improved their redetermination process in response to huge backlogs that prompted a legal aid lawsuit. The dual eligible Health Neighborhood proposal’s behavioral health component has been improved by shifting from the controversial, administratively complex and fragmented co-lead proposal to a partnership. This is what…

Supreme Court upholds Affordable Care Act

By Ellen Andrews | June 28, 2012 |

Today the US Supreme Court affirmed almost all of the 2010 national health reform Affordable Care Act. This is a wonderful outcome for Connecticut – for the 200,000 who will now get coverage, for the $1.5 billion/year to our state to make coverage affordable for low income residents, for 26 year-olds who can stay on…

Medicaid Council meeting update

By Ellen Andrews | June 10, 2012 |

Friday’s Medicaid Assistance Program Oversight Council meeting was very productive and mainly positive. The main area of discussion was DSS’ implementation of new asset limits required by budget negotiations (bad news) and new spend down tracking processes (good news). This August the enrollment brokers (Xerox, formerly ACS) will handle tracking and evaluation of medical bills…

Comments on dual eligible proposal center on behavioral health co-lead

By Ellen Andrews | May 27, 2012 |

Comments at Friday’s Complex Care Committee meeting focused on the late addition of requiring a behavioral health co-lead to DSS’s proposal to manage care for CT’s dual eligible. The pilot proposal would create five health neighborhoods, a collection of local providers across the care continuum, working as a team to coordinate care for about 5,000…

Medicare/Medicaid dual eligible reform plan update

By Ellen Andrews | May 14, 2012 |

On Friday, the Medicaid Council passed the recommendations of the Complex Care Subcommittee on DSS’s application for an integrated care demonstration program for people eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare. The committee recommended that the Council endorse DSS’ application with the condition that providers be rewarded based on performance on quality measures; the amount they…

Medicaid Council hears payment reform plan for duals

By Ellen Andrews | April 16, 2012 |

On Friday, the Medical Assistance Program Oversight Council heard DSS’ plans for a shared savings payment model for people eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare. The Council also heard feedback and recommendations from the Council’s model design subcommittee. The plan is to create 3 to 5 local Health Neighborhoods (HNs) in CT to provide comprehensive,…

Experience to inform health insurance exchange outreach

By Ellen Andrews | March 21, 2012 |

CT has a long and varied history of outreach programs; some worked very well and some were less successful. There is a great deal of experience available to the CT Health Insurance Exchange and their consultants to design a robust program that meets the needs of individuals and small businesses likely to enroll. As individuals…

Dual eligible payment reform update

By Ellen Andrews | March 13, 2012 |

Advocates have raised concerns about DSS’ plans to re-engineer CT’s Medicaid pilot program for dual eligibles, people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Last year HHS granted CT $1 million to plan this initiative. DSS intends to assign consumers to “health neighborhoods” – contractual networks of providers to cover the care continuum that will coordinate…