By: Sandy Chung, MD, FAAP, President, American Academy of Pediatrics
“The American Academy of Pediatrics applauds the actions taken yesterday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to help reconnect children to care in the states where they are struggling the most.
“The AAP has been sounding the alarm since federal Medicaid protections expired last spring that children would unjustly and disproportionately lose coverage without adequate planning and oversight. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. More than 2 million children lost Medicaid coverage in just six months, despite many of these children remaining eligible for the program. This is in the face of existing Medicaid requirements that should make it simple and straightforward for children to keep their coverage. Challenges like receiving unclear instructions from state Medicaid officials, long call center wait times, and data systems glitches led to children being harmed.
“As we started to see the number of children being dropped from Medicaid, AAP began urging CMS to use their enforcement powers to keep as many children as possible enrolled in Medicaid and to minimize losses. Yesterday’s actions by CMS are an important step forward in doing just that, and align with the federal oversight called for by the AAP in its most recent policy statement on Medicaid and CHIP.
“These efforts come at crucial time for child health, with widespread mental health needs among young people and viruses like RSV, flu and COVID circulating. Parents should not be confronted with an unexpected loss of Medicaid coverage when taking their children to the pediatrician, and we welcome yesterday’s actions as one way to help prevent this from happening.
“Pediatricians will continue doing our part to assist families in securing health coverage, and we stand ready to support further efforts to keep all our nation’s children safe and healthy.”
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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.