On Tuesday (May 8), Capitol Hill was crawling with babies.
Babies from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with their families, had descended upon the Hill’s east lawn for the annual “Strolling Thunder” Rally, organized by Zer...
Month: May 2018
Administration Rejects Proposal For Lifetime Medicaid Cap
The Trump administration laid out limits on how much flexibility it would allow states in running Medicaid. Work requirements are in and lifetime caps are out.
(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Trump tries to fix deficit caused by tax cuts by cutting billions from children’s health care
The Trump administration is set to ask Congress to claw back $15 billion in federal spending. If passed, it would be the largest “rescission” package passed in American history.
Nearly half of the cuts — roughly $7 billion — would come from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program many low-income families depend on for coverage. The White House claims the cuts will not have an impact on the program, which currently has an enrollment of about 9 mill...
Louisiana to warn thousands of elderly, disabled they may lose Medicaid
Louisiana is reportedly set to tell tens of thousands of elderly and disabled residents this week that they may lose Medicaid benefits in the coming months.The state Health Department is prepa...
Trump administration stops short of approving the most restrictive Medicaid policy yet
The Trump administration just denied Kansas’ request to create an unprecedented “lifetime limit” on Medicaid, a federal insurance largely for the poor and disabled.
“We seek to create a pathway out of poverty, but we also understand that people’s circumstances change, and we must ensure that our programs are sustainable and available to them when they need and qualify for them,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma ...
States waste hundreds of thousands on drug testing for welfare, but have little to show for it
In 2017, states spent more than $490,000 to drug-test 2,541 people who had applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, which yielded just 301 positive tests.
While the costs for these programs has dropped somewhat over the past three years, the number of positive tests has also declined.
This year, ThinkProgress also asked states to provide the questionnaires used to determine whether there is “reasonable suspicion” that their applicants/recipients ar...
Meet Noel Francisco: The man who will supervise Mueller if Trump fires Rosenstein
Even before he became Donald Trump’s top Supreme Court advocate, Solicitor General Noel Francisco was a magnet for Trumpian causes. Francisco was one of the tobacco industry‘s top appellate advocates. And he represented the coal company at the heart of a deadly mining disaster — a coal company owned by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
In the Supreme Court, Francisco convinced the justices to effectively strip President Obama of the recess appointments ...
The Ethics of Medicaid’s Work Requirements and Other Personal Responsibility Policies
This Viewpoint discusses the possible harms of controversial state-mandated work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries and proposes safeguards the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services might put in place to minimize health risks to patients.
Trump Says He Got Rid of Obamacare. The I.R.S. Doesn’t Agree.
The I.R.S. has started sending penalty notices to businesses that failed to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, angering Republicans and business groups.