Other Populations

This two-pager presents knowledge gaps and research opportunities elevated during a national convening of child support and child poverty experts. The questions under each topic are opportunities where research can support child support program decision-making surrounding current issues elevated during the convening, though they do not cover the only important questions for study.

Between 1988 and 1998, Congress established the Medicare Savings Programs (MSPs). MSPs are Medicaid programs that subsidize the cost of Medicare premiums, deductibles, co-insurance, and other cost sharing for Medicare beneficiaries with low incomes.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes many provisions that aim to reduce out-of-pocket spending for prescription drugs covered under Medicare Part D. In 2024, cost-sharing in the final phase of the Part D benefit, the catastrophic coverage phase, was eliminated.

Congress has directed HHS to operate the Children’s Interagency Coordinating Council (CICC). The CICC is charged with fostering greater coordination and transparency on child policy across federal agencies and examining a broad array of cross-cutting issues affecting child poverty and child well-being.

Custody relinquishment occurs when children enter foster care primarily to receive behavioral health or disability services, not because of maltreatment. Parents may relinquish custody for a variety of reasons. Entering foster care could provide children with access to services that are otherwise unavailable due to limited capacity.

The U.S. behavioral health (BH) workforce faces significant shortages and distribution disparities, hindering access to quality care and worsening health outcomes. A comprehensive, centralized database of BH providers is vital for advancing patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), comparative effectiveness research (CER), and evidence-based policymaking.

The first brief below provides insight into children’s and adolescents’ mental health service use in Medicaid and CHIP during the pandemic, by using a national Medicaid claims database.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) changes the way Medicare pays for prescription drugs. These changes will impact various stakeholders, including Medicare, Medicare enrollees, drug manufacturers, and others.

This New Jersey case study provides insights into the daunting challenges states face in seeking to address the home care worker shortage, which has become more acute as New Jersey and other states have striven to “re-balance” Medicaid long-term services and supports use and spending away from institutional care toward home and community-based services.

This ASPE issue brief lays out a proposed comprehensive analytic framework to fully evaluate the impact of the CMS Innovation Center’s efforts on the Medicare program and the broader health care system as a whole to test innovative payment and service delivery models that reduce program expenditures while preserving or enhancing the quality of care.