“Is there anyone here from Oklahoma?”

I was at a national conference of health care policy experts and advocates last month when the morning’s plenary speaker, Cindy Mann, Medicaid Director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posed that ominous question. “Uh-oh. What have we done this time?”, I wondered, as I tentatively lifted my hand.  But this time, Oklahoma was being singled out for major praise, not ridicule. What Oklahoma had done that had Mann and several others at the conference gushing was launch a new streamlined enrollment system for the Medicaid program that may be the most user-friendly in the nation – and that positions Oklahoma at the front of the pack as states face the challenges and opportunities of implementing health care reform in the coming years.

Until the launch of the new enrollment system, applicants for SoonerCare health insurance coverage, the state’s Medicaid program, submitted a paper application to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) during regular office working hours. In most cases an eligibility determination would be made 20 to 30 days later after information was entered into the agency’s legacy mainframe computer and verified. Policies and procedures were handled at least slightly differently in each county office and by each caseworker, and the client numbering and tracking system was prone to errors. Read the rest of this entry »

This week I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of policy analysts and advocates from 15 states on “Transforming Health Care Coverage for Children and Families,” convened by Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. The conference, which focused on the opportunities and challenges of providing coverage to the uninsured while the new health care reform law is being implemented, featured a keynote address by Cindy Mann, Director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operation within CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This post shares some of her key points. It has been cross-posted to CCF’s “Say Ahhh!” blog.

Mann started out by reminding the attendees that Medicaid is already a key source of health insurance, providing coverage to nearly 63 million Americans over the course of the year in 2008. Currently, Medicaid is of particular importance for covering children in low-income families, and has been primarily responsible for the substantial progress made in reducing the rates of uninsured children to below 10 percent nationally in 2008.  Enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the program that covers children from moderate income families in some states, grew by 2.6 million children in 2008-09, picking up the slack for declining employer-based coverage during the initial phase of the economic downturn. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has worked over the years to support access to health care for low-income children and families will be heartened to learn that the Obama administration has appointed Cindy Mann to lead the Centers for Medicaid and State Operations, which is the division within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that oversees the Medicaid and CHIP programs. Cindy is a highly passionate, intelligent, and experienced health care expert. Most recently, she was founder and Director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families; before that, she was  Deputy Director of CMS (back in the days when it was still HCFA) in the Clinton administration.  There are few, if any, people more highly respected in the health care policy and advocacy world. You can read Cindy’s thoughts on her new appointment and on her stellar replacements at the Center for Children and Families, Joan Alker and Jocelyn Guyer.

As health care reform heats up, it is clear that the Medicaid program will be one of the pillars upon which a new system providing health insurance coverage to all Americans will be built.  While Medicaid faces many significant challenges in the years ahead, it will without question benefit from Cindy Mann’s strong leadership.