First Focus on Children, along with 84 other organizations dedicated to the health and well-being of children, submitted the following comment to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to share our support of the proposed rule and to make additional recommendations to strengthen the rule for children.
Excerpt from the Comment:
We strongly support the rule’s efforts to make Deferred Acon for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients eligible for federal healthcare programs and believe the rule represents a long overdue correction to the arbitrary eligibility carve out implemented following the introduction of the DACA program in 2012. By specifically excluding DACA recipients from those classified as “lawfully present” and “lawfully residing” under HHS’ definitions for deferred action in the PCIP program, Medicaid, CHIP, the Basic Health Program (BHP), and the marketplace, hundreds of thousands of youth and young adults have been largely without access to affordable healthcare. This exclusion not only harms recipients themselves but also their U.S. citizen children, whose overall health and insurance coverage are closely linked to that of their parents.