Medicaid Bonuses to Reward States for Insuring More Children

[Clio the Leo]

Medicaid Bonuses to Reward States for Insuring More Children
By KEVIN SACK
Published: December 27, 2010

The Obama administration plans to announce Monday that it will make $206 million in bonus Medicaid payments to 15 states — with more than a fourth of the total going to Alabama — for signing up children who are eligible for public health insurance but had previously failed to enroll.

The payments, which were established when Congress and President Obama reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 2009, are aimed at one of the most persistent frustrations in government health care: the inability to enroll an estimated 4.7 million children who would be eligible for subsidized coverage if their families could be found and alerted. Two of every three uninsured children are thought to meet the income criteria for government insurance programs.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has called the matter “a moral obligation” and has challenged health care providers, state and local governments and community groups to seek out eligible children.

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The bonus grants are distributed according to a formula. To qualify, states must have adopted at least five of eight measures aimed at streamlining enrollment for children in public insurance programs and have recorded Medicaid caseload increases that could not be attributed solely to a worsening economy. Thirty-two states did not even apply for the grants. Three of the 18 that did apply did not qualify for payments.

Alabama will receive a $55 million bonus, more than twice as much as any other state, for having 133,000 more children on its Medicaid rolls than projected by a formulated base line, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The 15 states that will receive bonuses reported a total of 874,347 children above the baseline, which factors in population growth and, to some degree, demand driven by the economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/health/policy/27medicaid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss