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Issue: Disruptions in health coverage may delay care for children and create higher administrative costs. To address these disruptions, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022 requires states to give children 12 months of continuous eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by 2024. Currently, 33 states offer continuous eligibility to at least some children. Goal: To estimate how ensuring 12-month and 24-month continuous eligibility for all children in Medicaid and CHIP would affect health care coverage and costs. Methods: Simulation of changes in health coverage and government spending impact, using the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model. Key Findings and Conclusions: When all states adopt 12-month continuous eligibility in 2024, Medicaid and CHIP enrollment in states that do not already have it will increase by 239,000 children in an average month, an increase of 0.6 percent. Families will spend an estimated $292 million less on health care, an average of $1,222 less per year for each child newly enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. Federal spending will increase by $458 million annually, and state spending will increase by $238 million annually, both only 0.1 percent increases in government spending on acute care for the nonelderly. Adopting continuous eligibility for 24 months would further expand child health coverage and reduce costs for families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ISSUE: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 eliminated the financial penalty of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. States could reinstate a similar penalty to encourage health insurance enrollment, ensuring broad sharing of health care costs across healthy and sick populations to stabilize the marketplaces. GOAL: To provide state-by-state estimates of the impact on insurance coverage, premiums, and mandate penalty revenues if the state were to adopt an individual mandate. METHODS: Urban Institute's Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM) is used to estimate the coverage and cost impacts of statespecific individual mandates. We assume each state adopts an individual mandate similar to the ACA's. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION: If all states implemented individual mandates, the number of uninsured would be lower by 3.9 million in 2019 and 7.5 million in 2022. On average, marketplace premiums would be 11.8 percent lower in 2019. State mandate penalty revenues would amount to $7.4 billion and demand for uncompensated care would be $11.4 billion lower. The impact on coverage and on premiums varies in significant ways across states. For example, in 2019, the number of people uninsured would be 19 percent lower in Colorado and 10 percent lower in California if they implemented their own mandates. With mandates in place, average premiums would be 4 percent lower in Alaska and 15 percent lower in Washington. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an overview of insights on issues related to racial and ethnic disparities in influenza and pneumococcal immunization rates among Medicare Part B beneficiaries and to age-rating rules for health insurance in the U.S.