- Medicaid costs rise, report says, but not more than most states expected, By Abby Goodnaugh, October 15, 2015, New York Times: “Spending on Medicaid rose nearly 14 percent on average in the last fiscal year, a report has found, largely because of a tide of newly eligible enrollees in the 29 states that had expanded the program by then to cover millions more low-income adults. But for most of those states, the per-member, per-month cost of the new enrollees was not higher — in a few cases, in fact, it was lower — than expected, according to the report, released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. And almost all of the additional spending was covered by federal funds, which are paying the entire cost of expanding Medicaid through 2016 and at least 90 percent thereafter…”
- Survey: Big growth in Medicaid enrollees in expansion states, By Christina A. Cassidy (AP), October 15, 2015, Washington Post: “States that opted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act saw enrollment increase on average by 18 percent during the first full year of expansion, according to a report released Thursday. That will soon have an effect on state budgets, with expansion states to pay a portion of costs to cover the new enrollees beginning in 2017. Currently, the federal government is covering the expanded population at 100 percent. States will eventually pay 10 percent of costs by 2020…”
- Study: Nearly half of Iowa’s uninsured are eligible for Medicaid, By Ed Tibbetts, October 15, 2015, Quad-City Times: “A new study says nearly half of Iowa’s non-elderly uninsured are eligible for Medicaid, one of the highest rates in the nation. The Kaiser Family Foundation this week released a state-by-state analysis, which said 188,000 non-elderly are uninsured in Iowa, and 47 percent of them are eligible for Medicaid, the program that is run jointly by the federal government and the states to provide coverage for the low-income and disabled people…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty