Adrianna McIntyre
@adrianna.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics at @hsph.harvard.edu I study how administrative burdens impede health insurance coverage, strategies to reduce these barriers, and the politics of health reform she/her/Michigander adriannamcintyre.com
Huh. Nebraska's Medicaid director — who oversaw the state launching Medicaid work requirements months ahead of deadline and was featured in a @tradeoffs.org podcast episode just a couple weeks ago — announced his resignation yesterday.
Leader of Nebraska's embattled Medicaid program resigns • Nebraska Examiner
Drew Gonshorowski, director of Medicaid and Long-Term Care in the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, has resigned.
nebraskaexaminer.com
Back in 2013, Republican officials in AR made the case for budget neutrality of its "private option" 1115 waiver by arguing that the state would otherwise need to stand up a costly new managed care regime to expand Medicaid. Now it's the first state to face waiver non-renewal under OBBBA policies.
KFF Health News@kffhealthnews.org · 2d agoMedicaid coverage for low-income Arkansans next year is in question, owing to an arcane change under congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. https://kffhealthnews.org/medicaid/trump-cms-medicaid-expansion-1115-waivers-budget-neutrality-arkansas/
My new blog with @akohler.bsky.social has an important takeaway. Check w/ your state if you live in one of the 28. Almost All Custodial Parents, Caretaker Relatives Should Not be Impacted by Medicaid Work Reporting Requirements in 28 States ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/08/13/a... via @GeorgetownCCF
Almost All Custodial Parents, Caretaker Relatives Should Not be Impacted by Medicaid Work Reporting Requirements in 28 States
As states rush to implement complex new work reporting requirement provisions before January 2027, the new Interim Final Rule (IFR) released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has...
ccf.georgetown.edu
I just never get sick of her sitting like a person on one of our deck chairs
This is a lovely remembrance of Bob Blendon from @mollybrodie.bsky.social
Remembering Bob Blendon, An Essential Professor, Teacher, And Mentor | Health Affairs Forefront
It wasn’t just his advice and his connections that made him an exceptional mentor and teacher. It was how he treated you, making you feel like a valued member of the community.
healthaffairs.org
Some red states are prohibiting people from attesting to being too sick to meet Medicaid work reqs, meaning people will need to gather medical paperwork to prove frailty — and states will need to be ready to process it quickly and accurately. Both of those are cracks people will slip through.
The Trump admin offered sick Medicaid patients a 1-year lifeline. These red states are rejecting it.
Several conservative states will require proof from people who say they're too sick to work.
politico.com
Now that he's secured the nomination, I do wonder if we're going to see AES's discussion of Medicare for All take a more pronounced incrementalist posture, leaning into affordability and populism — rein in prior auth, reduce deductibles, break up big corps
Citizen Cohn / Jonathan Cohn@citizencohn.bsky.social · 2w agoEl-Sayed has said Medicare for All is his Mount Everest I asked him how he imagines scaling it www.thebulwark.com/p/the-medica...
Sad to hear that Ted Marmor has passed away. A pioneer who helped create field of health politics & one of the first US scholars to study Canadian health insurance & advocate for single payer.Ted believed in public policy that embraced social insurance to achieve health & social security for all
Have been wondering about this sort of possibility… if not a legislative rider, as suggested here, perhaps an exercise of the Congressional Review Act (though I’m not holding my breath)
elizabethginexi.bsky.social@elizabethginexi.bsky.social · 2w agoTop senators consider blocking the OMB rule. www.politico.com/live-updates...
The deadline for commenting on the interim final rule on Medicaid work requirements is tomorrow at midnight. So far, CMS has received almost 73,000 comments. www.regulations.gov/document/CMS...
Had a lot of thoughts while listening to this — not all of them polite — including continuing to marvel that Nebraska did not scale up their Medicaid staff at all in anticipation of work requirements
Meet the Man Launching Trump's Medicaid Work Requirements Months Early
Nebraska Medicaid Director Drew Gonshorowski says the state’s data capabilities put it in a strong position to quickly implement the historic changes. Advocates and researchers warn that eligible peop...
tradeoffs.org
This was always a concern with this case — not that the states are wrong on the merits of the Medicaid work requirements regulation, but that any challenge isn't "ripe" yet because implementation is still very much ongoing
Alice Miranda Ollstein@alicemiranda.bsky.social · 2w agoThe judge said the 25 states that sued didn't convince him they'd suffered enough harm yet to justify a preliminary injunction, but stressed they could still win down the road since the case "presents difficult issues” about Dr. Oz's “faithfulness to Congressional intent.” Ruling here:
OVERNIGHT BREAKING NEWS: A federal judge has DECLINED to stop the Trump admin from requiring that chronically ill Medicaid patients prove that they are physically unable to work in order to keep their insurance. The underlying case could still block the policy before the Jan. 1 implementation date.
Maybe less jaw-dropping, but similar flavor: if you unpacked the scoring criteria for Rural Health Transformation Program funding — largely left to the discretion of CMS to define — they sure did seem to favor red states... academic.oup.com/healthaffair...
tony romm@tonyromm.bsky.social · 3w agoNEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
Imagine what the comments to the proposed OMB rule would have looked like if this had come out two weeks ago.
tony romm@tonyromm.bsky.social · 3w agoNEW: In a stunning admission, the Trump administration admitted in court documents that it canceled billions in energy grants to states "based solely" on politics -- and whether that state was represented by Democrats and backed Harris in 2024. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/b...
And here’s the entirely foreseeable result of a law that imposes massive penalties if states give families the wrong amount of SNAP benefits, but no penalties if they make it virtually impossible for eligible families to get benefits in the first place.
Nebraska Examiner@nebraskaexaminer.com · 3w agoICYMI: May through June marked the sharpest single-month participation drop — nearly 6,000 — since at least 2014, says watchdog group Nebraska Appleseed. From Cindy Gonzalez
The AMA and Massachusetts Medical Society filed an amicus brief in support of the states suing the federal government over their work requirements regulation: www.courtlistener.com/docket/73546...
Amicus brief filed – #89 in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Oz (D. Mass., 1:26-cv-12962) – CourtListener.com
Amicus brief filed
courtlistener.com
Asking for help: are there any publicly available data sources on hospital surgical volume?
“I just wanted to give up”: People with disabilities have been denied Medicaid benefits due to IT problems. The problems foreshadow trouble as states ready major changes to their Medicaid programs under Trump's signature One Big Beautiful Bill. kffhealthnews.org/health-indus... @kffhealthnews.org
A Deloitte-Run System Denied Medicaid Benefits for Michigan’s Disabled. Now Trump’s Law Piles On. - KFF Health News
Complex computer systems that decide whether people, including the disabled, get Medicaid benefits have a history of errors. Now changes to comply with Trump’s signature tax and domestic policy law ar...
kffhealthnews.org
Had missed that there's legislation percolating in Ohio to do away with managed care in Medicaid (MCOs currently cover > 90% of non-elderly, non-disabled enrollees, including 96% of kids)
Ohio doesn't need to scrap managed care. It needs to sharpen it. • Ohio Capital Journal
Ohio lawmakers have been debating a measure that would upend the state's Medicaid managed care system altogether. They're not wrong that Ohio's managed care program has room for improvement, but scrap...
ohiocapitaljournal.com
One of the frustrations of policy analysis is seeing a predictable policy failures emerge. The loss of coverage Medicaid coverage after the pandemic was one, but at least you could partially blame the pandemic. The coming OBBBA Medicaid coollapse is man-made. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/one-year-o...
One Year On from the One Big Beautiful Bill:
Separating Fact from Trump’s Medicaid Fictions
donmoynihan.substack.com
New white paper from myself + colleagues: Implementation of Medicaid Work Requirements: Key Design Considerations and Strategies to Minimize Avoidable Coverage Loss hsph.me/Medicaid-Wor... We synthesize evidence in the peer-reviewed and gray literature to identify key lessons + recommendations
If you tried to mad libs a paper title to get me to click you couldn't do much better than this: The role of nonfinancial factors in the Congressional Budget Office’s health insurance coverage projections www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
