OTHER NEWS, INFORMATION, AND RESOURCES (Washington Update, November 30, 2018)

NEWS

American Children Losing Insurance Coverage
On November 21, the Georgetown Center on Children and Families (CCF) released a new report, Nation’s Progress on Children’s Health Coverage Reverses Course, which analyzes American Community Survey data nationally and at the state level.

The key findings are:

• For the first time in nearly a decade, the number of uninsured children in the United States increased. Recently released data shows an estimated 276,000 more children were uninsured in 2017 than in 2016. No state (except for the District of Columbia) experienced a significant decline in the number of uninsured children in 2017.
• Three-quarters of the children who lost coverage between 2016 and 2017 live in states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage to parents and other low-income adults. The uninsured rates for children increased at almost triple the rate in non-expansion states than in states that have expanded Medicaid.
• The share of children without health insurance nationally increased from 4.7 percent in 2016 to 5 percent in 2017. Nine states experienced statistically significant increases in their rate of uninsured children (SD, UT, TX, GA, SC, FL, OH, TN, MA).
• Texas has the largest share of children without health coverage with more than one in five uninsured children in the U.S. residing in the state.
• States with larger American Indian/Alaska Native populations tend to have higher uninsured rates for children than the national average.

The Prevalence of Parent-Reported Autism Spectrum Disorder among US Children
(Pediatrics, Nov. 2018)
Researchers estimate 1.5 million American children ages 3 to 17 have been diagnosed with the developmental disorder, for a prevalence rate of 2.5 percent. The figures come from data collected through the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, a government survey of parents of more than 50,000 children across the country. As part of the survey, parents were asked if a doctor or other health care provider had ever told them that their son or daughter had autism and, if so, they were asked if the child currently has the condition.

FDA Promised a “Lower-Cost Option” To Epipen, But the Price Isn’t Any Lower (STAT, 11/27/18)

FDA Plans Overhaul of Decades-Old Medical Device System
(Associated Press in STAT, 11/26/18)

OTHER RESOURCES

Achieving Care Integration for Children with Medical Complexity: The Human-Centered Design Approach to Care Coordination
(Published by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, 11/29/18)

State EVV Implementation Tracker
ANCOR has developed a tool – evvtracker.org – for tracking how states plan to implement their Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) systems for documenting that home and community-based services (HCBS) are actually being delivered. Under a 2016 law, states need to implement EVV systems by January 2020 or face reduction in federal Medicaid contributions.