Browse by Medicaid

This budget brief describing the Governor's Fiscal Year 2012 (FY 2012) budget proposal for MassHealth (Medicaid) and other health care programs is the first in a series of fact sheets that will be published by the Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute (MMPI) and produced by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center in partnership with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. MMPI will be publishing budget fact sheets at each stage in the FY 2012 budget process, as budget proposals move through the legislature.

A fact sheet that introduces MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, describing its basic structure, benefits, and beneficiaries. It examines how enrollment and spending have changed over time and describes some current policy issues and challenges. A updated fact sheet that introduces MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, describing its basic structure, benefits, and beneficiaries. It examines how enrollment and spending have changed over time and describes some current policy issues and challenges.

This report, written in conjunction with senior staff at the Center for Health Law and Economics, examines the phenomenon of enrollees cycling on and off state health insurance programs, specifically MassHealth and Commonwealth Care.

MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, could play a leading role in implementing dramatic changes to the health care payment system. This report outlines how so-called global payments could be used in MassHealth, which provides insurance coverage to roughly 1.2 million people in the state. Global payments have been recommended by both the Special Commission on Health System Payment and the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council as a means of reigning in health care cost increases and improving care coordination.

On November 13, 2009, MMPI partnered with the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum and Community Catalyst to sponsor a forum exploring efforts in Massachusetts to improve quality and control Medicaid prescription drug costs. At the forum, an issue brief was released that detailed implementation of a preferred drug list in the MassHealth program. In addition, speakers talked about the array of tools available to states to improve prescribing and reduce cost growth.

MassHealth eligibility has expanded through a series of incremental steps since 1997. This chart shows the populations that have been made eligible for MassHealth as a result of these expansions, by category and income level (relative to the federal poverty guidelines).

On December 22, 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved Massachusetts' request to renew the MassHealth Section 1115 Research and Demonstration Waiver (Waiver) for an additional three years, through the end of state fiscal year 2011. The Waiver, which has been in place since 1997, authorizes critical federal funding for several health coverage programs for low-income individuals and for the Commonwealth's safety net health system for uninsured residents. It is the programmatic and financial underpinning of the state's health care reform law.

This issue brief updates "MassHealth and State Fiscal Health: A New Look at the Effects of Medicaid Spending on State Finances," through 2007.

A fact sheet that introduces MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid program, describing its basic structure, benefits and beneficiaries. It examines how enrollment and spending have changed over time and describes some current policy issues and challenges.

An easy-to-use guide describing public health insurance options in Massachusetts and a set of flow charts illustrating the eligibility pathways to these programs for low-income people and families, elderly people, and people with disabilities. Also available on the Pathways to Coverage website.

The 2006 Massachusetts health care reform law included a provision to make Medicaid hospital rate increases contingent upon quality measures, including measures of the reduction of racial and ethnic disparities. To date, no other pay-for-performance programs have incorporated measures of the reduction of racial and ethnic disparities into their incentives. MMPI organized the Massachusetts Medicaid Disparities Policy Roundtable to bring together a group of experts to develop and recommend an approach to implementing the program.

The creation and implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit -- "Part D" -- attracted wide national attention and controversy. This paper, produced in collaboration with the Massachusetts Health Policy Forum, looks beyond the anecdotes and gives a progress report on the impact of Part D in Massachusetts for Medicare beneficiaries -- 200,000 of whom are also MassHealth members and for state health programs such as MassHealth and Prescription Advantage.

The issue brief examines how SCHIP is part of the Commonwealth's universal coverage strategy; how SCHIP is funded in Massachusetts; and the funding shortfalls the program now faces. The brief also details how the SCHIP program and funding are integrated with MassHealth, and the implications of that connection for the upcoming negotiations to extend the MassHealth waiver.

This report examines some of the important issues, opportunities and challenges facing the MassHealth program at the outset of a new Governor's administration including renewal of the the MassHealth waiver, improving the value of MassHealth purchasing, rebalancing long-term care, and providing strong leadership and bolstering staff.