According to a new report prepared by the Urban Institute and released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one in 10 (or 1.3 million) of the nation’s 12.5 million nonelderly veterans are uninsured and do not use VA (Department of Veterans Affairs) services, and 883,000 use only VA care. Approximately 950,000 of veterans’ nonelderly family members also lack coverage. This is the first report to look at how many veterans are uninsured and how many might be eligible for expanded coverage in 2014.
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Although there has been enough federal guidance issued lately to get anyone’s summer reading list off to a strong start, we’ve got another set of documents to add to your pile. CMS just issued a set of Q&As that address some of the most frequently asked questions it has received from states about the Medicaid expansion, eligibility coordination, and enrollment simplification.
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Last week, HHS awarded $181 million in health insurance exchange establishment grants to Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington.
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Earlier this month, the Social Security Administration added an online version of the Social Security Statement to its website. The new online statement is easy to use and provides people with secure real-time access to information on their Social Security earnings and benefit information. The new feature has been extremely popular, and more than 100,000 people used it within three days of its launch.
So, today, I joined those thousands of users and set up my own account. Yes, this is very sensitive information we're talking about here: To set up an account, the site requires users to enter their social security number, date of birth, and home address. But the site is secure, it provides a description of its privacy protections in simple, easy-to-understand language, and it was easy to set up my account. In about 10 minutes, I was looking at my annual earnings all the way back to my very first job in high school (thanks for the good times, Bagel Haul Deli!), as well as my projected Social Security monthly payment when I reach retirement age.
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Wonks, take note. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Center for Consumer Information and Oversight (CCIIO) recently released two new pieces of guidance on how health insurance exchanges and states will verify eligibility for coverage.
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If people are influenced by their “virtual” peers to consider signing up for organ donation, could their peers also influence them when it comes to enrolling in health coverage?
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