A federal agency recently issued a memo announcing it would no longer allow states to provide continuous Medicaid eligibility for young children. zimmytws via Getty Images

Each year, parents must renew their children’s Medicaid — a burdensome process that often leads to children losing health care coverage for months at a time. Renewal letters get lost in the mail, phone calls are missed and never returned, or verification paperwork is submitted but never processed. The result is the same: children lose coverage, and families lose access to the care their kids urgently need. 

For nearly 15 years, I’ve worked in Medicaid policy. Before joining GEEARS, I spent six years at a legal nonprofit serving Georgians with low incomes in the 154 counties outside of metro Atlanta. During that time, I answered dozens of calls each month from panicked parents and caregivers with the same heartbreaking concern: My child’s Medicaid was cut off even though we’re still eligible. 

Some moments have stuck with me:

• A mother phoned from an emergency room. Her daughter had a broken leg, but the hospital refused to set it because her Medicaid had been terminated. They sent the child home with only pain medication.
• A grandmother reached out in distress. Her grandson’s Medicaid had been cut off, and he hadn’t had his ADHD medication in months. He’d been suspended from school, and his grades were plummeting.
• A mother, standing outside a surgery center, had just been told her daughter’s scheduled ear tube surgery was canceled. Medicaid was showing as inactive, even though they had submitted all the requested information.

In each case, the child was still eligible for coverage. These were not gaps in eligibility, but gaps in the system.

That’s why GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students has long advocated for Georgia to adopt a Medicaid waiver that would ensure continuous coverage for children from birth through age three. The earliest years of life are critical for brain development, and stable access to care during this time helps lay the foundation for long-term health and learning. Routine pediatric visits, immunizations, developmental screenings, and early interventions — all are essential in the first three years of life.

Continuous coverage would both support children and families and also reduce the strain on state agencies by minimizing the paperwork caseworkers must review.

Yet on July 17th, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a memo announcing that it would no longer approve or renew Section 1115 waivers that provide continuous Medicaid eligibility for young children. This decision puts in jeopardy the waivers already approved in nine states and several other states’ waiver proposals.

Georgia never submitted such a waiver, though the legislatively mandated Comprehensive Health Coverage Commission recommended pursuing one for children through age six in its report last December. Had it been implemented, the policy could have stabilized care for the nearly 50% of babies whose births are covered by Medicaid.

Last year, that amounted to over 60,000 babies — 60,000 little ones who deserve uninterrupted access to health care during the most important years of their development. This waiver offered a straightforward solution. By shutting down this option, CMS has blocked a critical path to improving early childhood health outcomes in Georgia and across the country. It’s a deeply disappointing decision that ultimately harms our nation’s most precious assets: our children.  

This post was originally published on this site