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The Connection

A roundup of recent Fund publications, charts, multimedia, and other timely content.




March 10, 2023

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Getting Young People Help Before They’re in Crisis
Between 2015 and 2020, pediatric emergency department visits for mental health episodes increased by 43 percent. Some states are finding innovative ways to get help to young people before a crisis develops. On To the Point, Laura Conrad of the Technical Assistance Collaborative highlights different strategies for funding youth mental health services and promoting care models that center the needs and preferences of young people. She says linking families to a range of services is key to improving young people’s well-being and keeping them out of the hospital.

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Medicare’s Mental Health Coverage, Explained
Medicare coverage of mental health services has expanded in recent years to include lower cost sharing for outpatient care, free wellness visits, and telehealth. Yet gaps remain: inpatient psychiatric hospital care, for example, is capped at 190 days across a person’s lifetime, and patients in Medicare Advantage plans often lack access to in-network mental health providers. Read our explainer to learn about Medicare’s mental health benefits and what could be done to improve access for beneficiaries living with mental illness.

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FEATURED CHART



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How States Can Stem Looming Medicaid Coverage Losses

Now that the COVID public health emergency is ending, states have begun the process of reassessing eligibility for their Medicaid-covered residents. While some will get health insurance from other sources, many others — especially people living in the 11 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid — are at risk of becoming uninsured. On To the Point, the Commonwealth Fund’s Akeiisa Coleman, Sara Federman, and Jesse Baumgartner review policies that would help ensure this doesn’t happen. They discuss options like expanding Medicaid eligibility, extending postpartum coverage, and closing the coverage gap for people who don’t qualify for their state’s Medicaid program and don’t earn enough for marketplace plan subsidies.

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Unwinding Continuous Medicaid Enrollment

“Despite evidence showing that COVID risks remain elevated in the highest-need communities, continuous-enrollment protections were destined to end. Now everyone — from states to beneficiaries to the health care system itself — must prepare for what comes next,” write Sara R. Collins, Sara Rosenbaum, MaryBeth Musumeci, and Alex Somodevilla in the New England Journal of Medicine. With the end of the public health emergency in sight, states will soon face overlapping challenges as they unwind Medicaid’s continuous enrollment policy. Some 15 million Americans could lose Medicaid coverage, the authors say.

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Food Security Is a Health Care Issue. Medicaid Could Help.

Of the nearly 400,000 Medicaid enrollees with insulin-dependent diabetes, 40 percent have trouble affording healthy food. And that means they are likely to have trouble managing their conditions effectively. In the Washington Post, the Commonwealth Fund’s Rachel Nuzum writes about growing bipartisan support for using Medicaid to help people pay for healthy food. She reports that several states have already received the go-ahead to use portions of their Medicaid budgets to address food security issues.

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Discussing Medicare Coverage Choices with Brokers and Agents

Choosing between traditional Medicare and a Medicare Advantage plan can be a daunting task. For help in making these decisions, nearly a third of older adults turn to insurance brokers or agents, a Commonwealth Fund report finds. According to focus groups conducted by PerryUndem, brokers and agents earn higher commissions for enrolling people in Medicare Advantage plans, and they’re more apt to sell these plans to beneficiaries with lower incomes.

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A Nation of Immigrants — Without Access to Affordable Health Care

Many refugees and migrants undertake perilous journeys that threaten their health. It should be no surprise that they also have poorer health outcomes than citizens of their host countries. As the Commonwealth Fund’s Reginald D. Williams II notes in the most recent International Insights, the United States has the resources to be a global leader in refugee and migrant health. He says recommendations from a recent World Health Organization report offer a pathway to safeguard the health needs and rights of all people on the move.

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Expanding Access to Behavioral Health Services Through IT

A variety of companies are leveraging technology — including artificial intelligence and text-messaging systems — to
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expand access to behavioral health supports, according to a recent New Yorker article. Commonwealth Fund researchers have highlighted how such digital health tools have been tailored to
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engage Medicaid beneficiaries and make care more convenient and accessible, particularly for
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teens and young adults .





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