First Focus on Children submitted the following responses to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ request for information on access to coverage and care in Medicaid & CHIP.
Excerpt from the response:
Millions of uninsured families never receive coverage because they don’t know help is available, doubt they qualify, and do not apply for coverage. The Urban Institute estimates that 57.4 percent of the uninsured children in 2018 were eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP.1 Studies have shown that interventions to enroll children based on eligibility in other means-tested programs (SNAP, WIC, etc) would capture 70% of those children who are eligible but are not otherwise currently enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP.2 This includes many children with disabilities, for whom coverage is necessary to not only improve health outcomes and quality of life, but also to mitigate tremendous financial strain and medical debt for their family to simply acquire medically necessary therapy, durable medical equipment, or home health care. Consequently, meaningful outreach and enrollment resources and efforts that are culturally and linguistically appropriate (for example, in native language and plain language) and community-based, as well as “no wrong door” policies continue to be vital to improving children’s access to care under Medicaid and CHIP. CMS must work in close partnership across HHS as well as with other agencies such as DOE to connect and activate existing community-based and family-led organizations and projects to deliver enrollment services “where families are.” This type of whole-of-government partnership with community-based and family-led organizations also ensures that diverse community health workers and peer-to-peer support can best reflect the communities in which they are situated and are best suited to offer culturally and linguistically appropriate enrollment services.