JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – In the last seven months, more than 135,000 Missourians have been removed from the state’s Medicaid program, and nearly half of them are children.
Until April of this year, states were prohibited from removing anyone from Medicaid due to the COVID public health emergency. Now, as Medicaid renewals are once again required, they come at a time when the federal government will soon mandate yearlong coverage for kids.
“I think there’s a lot of security for families in knowing that their child is going to have coverage for 12 months,” communications director for the Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) Caitlin Whaley said. “It allows the ability to confidently schedule therapies and schedule any procedures that they might need.”
Starting in January, all states will be required to cover Medicaid recipients under 18 for a full year.
“It was common practice before this that you would have to be re-certified perhaps every three, four, six months, depending on the state, when you would have to provide that financial documentation that you were still eligible,” Mercy Hospital JFK Clinic pediatrician Dr. Maya Moody said.
This means that even if a parent has a minor change in income, the child won’t be kicked off. Whaley said it’s important for parents to know that continuous coverage doesn’t mean annual renewals will go away.
“I don’t want parents to get the message that they don’t need to pay attention to the mail or engage with the agency when we reach out to them about coverage because that is still a critical part in maintaining your child’s coverage,” Whaley said. “They still are going to need to do those annual renewals to make sure that that child has coverage.”
This federal rule takes effect as nearly 65,000 kids are losing eligibility. Kids make up the overwhelming majority of the state’s Medicaid program.
“There’s higher potential for them to lose coverage because there’s just more of them,” Whaley said. “But it’s not singling out. It’s not anything like that. It’s just purely us going through our annual redetermination process.”
Starting April 1, Missouri has one year to complete the task of reassessing the eligibility of every enrollee. DSS estimates that up to 300,000 Missourians could lose coverage through the renewal process. Before the renewal process started, the state had 1.6 million people on Medicaid. Before the public health emergency, there were around 900,000 enrollees.
So far, more than 47,00 adults have been removed from MO HealthNet, the state’s Medicaid program, followed by 4,000 elderly and nearly 64,000 kids.
Besides working in a clinic that services kids either on Medicaid or uninsured, Moody is also the president of the Missouri Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“We talk about breaking the cycle of poverty, we talk about breaking the cycle of violence, we talk about creaking the cradle to prison pipeline and that’s what I’m doing every day,” Moody said.
She said it’s common in her clinic at Mercy, which sees roughly 3,000 patients a year, for parents to find out at their appointment their child is no longer covered by Medicaid.
“Say you’re a mom, you have three kids, you’re working two jobs and you come in for their check-ups and the front office says, I’m sorry, their Medicaid is inactive, we can’t see you today,” Moody said. “For our clinic, it just breaks our heart every time the front desk calls and says so-and-so’s Medicaid isn’t eligible.”
Her hope is that continuous coverage leads to more proactive parents and healthier Missourians.
“It shouldn’t be some kids get this and other kids don’t,” Moody said. “Every child deserves high-quality healthcare.”
It’s important to note that while the continuous coverage requirement comes as the state is in the middle of the Medicaid renewal process, the two are separate programs. The 12-month coverage will apply to those who enroll after Jan. 1.
For more information on Medicaid renewals, visit the department’s website. If someone is no longer eligible for Medicaid, DSS will work to connect them to the federal marketplace for alternative coverage.
