Issue Briefs | Feb 12, 2012

Strategies for Building Seamless Health Systems for Low-Income Populations

The George Washington University – Sara Rosenbaum; Center for Health Care Strategies – Stephen Somers and Shannon McMahon

The Affordable Care Act offers numerous opportunities to stabilize coverage and care for beneficiaries as their incomes fluctuate, and states can reduce the impact of churn between coverage programs with design and purchasing strategies that promote seamlessness. This brief explores the challenges for states in creating seamless health coverage for low-income populations, while providing states with a roadmap as they consider building seamless health systems. Key issues for states to consider include managing subsidy fluctuations through carefully designed eligibility and enrollment strategies and ensuring stable coverage and care by creating seamlessness across benefits, providers, and health plans.


Expert Perspectives

An Early Look at State Budget Actions in Response to COVID-19 and the Impact on State Health Programs

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that has triggered an economic crisis. While the federal government acted to provide financial relief, states have faced significant growth in expenditures in response to the pandemic, as well as simultaneous and severe drops in revenue. This expert perspective provides a snapshot of how states are navigating the known and unknown fiscal challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, given declining revenues and rising spending demands in the context of balanced budget requirements. The strategies that states employ to address the fiscal fallout of COVID-19, will have significant and long-lasting implications for critical health care and safety net programs.

June 29, 2020

Equitable Recovery Strategies

As state officials shift their focus towards loosening social distancing policies and reopening, they must now grapple with balancing both economic and public health concerns while also considering how reopening policies will impact residents in very different ways, possibly mitigating or exacerbating preexisting disparities. This expert perspective provides a survey of actions that state and local governments have taken to intentionally incorporate equity into their recovery and reopening policies.