Thanks to its efforts to ease children’s access to health insurance, Wisconsin is slated to receive a near $14 million performance bonus from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the centers announced Monday.
Wisconsin’s bonus is part of a pool of more than $307 million distributed among 23 states under the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009.
States receiving bonus dollars have earned those dollars by working to simplify enrollment and renewal processes through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program so that barriers to health care enrollment are reduced for eligible children.
Improvement initiatives that have qualified states for performance bonuses have included doing away with face-to-face interview requirements so that applications can be administered online or through the mail, reducing paperwork through electronic data-matching, and easing the process to renew coverage.
This year marks the fifth and final year of performance bonuses. Award amounts are based on states’ increases in children’s Medicaid enrollment over a defined target.
Other states receiving performance bonuses are Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Washington.
