We use tallies of Medicaid enrollment by age and sex at the county level from the Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS) from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The time reference is May from the latest year of MSIS data available for most states. We combine the MSIS enrollment tallies and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment totals together as one variable for use in the SAHIE models.

Medicaid Statistical Information System (MSIS)

The MSIS is used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to gather key eligibility, enrollment, program, utilization and expenditure data.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Children's Health Insurance Program Participation

Number of children enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by state.

Starting with the updated 2013 SAHIE, we also incorporate published totals from CMS’ Medicaid and CHIP Application, Eligibility Determination, and Enrollment Data (MCAEDED) and some other auxiliary data (described further below). MCAEDED were first published for July through September 2013, and they are a monthly source of up-to-date Medicaid and CHIP totals. The arrival of MCAEDED provided SAHIE an opportunity to improve its Medicaid source data timeliness, which seemed especially important as many states were opting to expand their Medicaid eligibility criteria under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Medicaid and CHIP Application, Eligibility Determination, and Enrollment Data

The Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Data Highlights represents state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) agency activity for the month.

About the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Text of the 2010 health care law and the regulations issued to implement the law.

Our methods for incorporating MCAEDED and other data with the MSIS and CHIP tallies are as follows. We compute the annual percentage change in the timely MCAEDED totals at the state level. We modify these top-line MCAEDED percentage changes at the state (and higher) level according to demographic change (age, sex and disability status) by utilizing Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Medicaid and CHIP data and American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year Medicaid (and other public plan) estimates. We further modify these percentage changes across counties within state by utilizing percentage change in Medicaid and CHIP income-eligibility estimates computed from aggregated IRS 1040 tax return data. We then apply these modified percentage changes to our original MSIS and CHIP tallies by age, sex, and county. These Medicaid and CHIP methods are described in greater detail in "Medicaid and CHIP Data Methodology for SAHIE Models," a paper which we also presented at the 2015 Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology (FCSM) Research Conference.

Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Medicaid and CHIP Data

Information about the Medicaid Enrollment Snapshot data produced by KFF.

American Community Survey (ACS)

The American Community Survey is the premier source for information about America's changing population, housing and workforce.

Working Paper

Medicaid and CHIP Data Methodology for SAHIE Models

May 2016

This work documents the latest available Medicaid and CHIP data sources and describes an updated Medicaid and CHIP data methodology for use in SAHIE production.

Finally, the Medicaid tallies for some counties are unavailable in MSIS or have data values that seem implausible. In either of these cases the raw Medicaid tallies are not used in the SAHIE models. For these cases, the SAHIE model itself supplies estimates for the missing values.

For more information see the Medicaid page.

Medicaid

Medicaid provides health coverage to low-income people and is one of the largest payers for health care in the United States.