ASK Act

Advancing Seniors and Kids Act or the ASK Act

This bill extends, and otherwise revises, various public health and social welfare programs. Specifically, the bill:

• permanently extends the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP);
• extends by one year, but reduces by half, additional federal financial participation for CHIP;
• extends CHIP's qualifying-states option, express-lane eligibility option, and outreach and enrollment program;
• extends the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund, the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project, and the Pediatric Quality Measures Program;
• modifies Medicare payment rules and reporting requirements with respect to ground-ambulance services;
• permanently extends specialized Medicare Advantage (MA) plans for certain special-needs individuals;
• expands certain supplemental benefits under MA for chronically ill enrollees;
• extends the Medicare payment adjustment known as the "home-health rural add-on";
• makes permanent or extends other specified programs and payment rules under Medicare;
• under Medicaid, extends certain health workforce demonstration projects as well as specified programs related to community health centers, diabetes, graduate medical education, family-to-family health-information centers, abstinence education, and personal-responsibility education;
• delays certain changes, under Medicaid, to disproportionate-share hospital allotments and to third-party liability provisions;
• extends the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program and requires, under the program, continued demonstration of improvements in certain benchmark areas;
• establishes a grant program for the monitoring of representative payees under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program;
• otherwise revises provisions related to representative payment under SSI and OASDI; and
• with respect to the child-welfare system, modifies provisions related to information sharing and to overpayment liability.

Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. All summary versions on Congress.gov