Millions of children at risk of losing health insurance as COVID-19 emergency coverage ends.

With the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) set to expire this year, ending the federal guarantee of continuous Medicaid coverage during the pandemic, states are once again required to check eligibility for everyone enrolled in Medicaid, including kids. Some 40 million children enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP nationwide are at risk of losing their health during this transition back.

In California, 5.7 million children are covered by Medi-Cal (Medicaid/CHIP in the state), a major source of coverage for children of color. The State estimates 2-3 million Californians will lose their Medi-Cal coverage, including between 800,000 to 1.2 million kids losing their Medi-Cal coverage.

At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, May 20, speakers – Mayra Alvarez, The Children’s Partnership; Christina Moreno, California Department of Health Care Services; Yingjia Huang, California Department of Health Care Services; Georgina Maldonado, Executive Director, Community Health Initiative of Orange County; and Joan Alker, Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, Research Professor and Executive Director – explain what the stakes are for children’s health, and what the state is doing, and what the community can do to help children stay covered. California’s AB 2402 – guaranteeing multi-year continuous Medi-Cal coverage for 0-to-5-year-olds, offers a long-term model.

(Above, l-r): Mayra Alvarez, The Children’s Partnership; Christina Moreno, California Department of Health Care Services; Yingjia Huang, California Department of Health Care Services; Georgina Maldonado, Executive Director, Community Health Initiative of Orange County; and Joan Alker, Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, Research Professor and Executive Director. (EMS)

Mayra Alvarez opened the session, “We cannot overlook the essential role that health insurance coverage and access to health care plays in the lives of our children, especially during this current public health crisis. We are currently operating under a public health emergency. It is set to expire in July, but we expect it to be renewed.

“During the pandemic, under this public health emergency authority, number of flexibilities were put in place to allow communities to be supported and protected, for example, you may have heard that there were telehealth flexibilities, there were flexibilities with COVID testing and treatments and payment, and certain public programs were provided flexibilities.

“One of those was to allow families to stay enrolled in health care coverage through Medicaid without additional administrative renewals, without having to redetermine or prove their eligibility during this public health crisis.

“As we look to the ending of the public health emergency, again which could come as early as July, the coverage protections offered will end and families will face these administrative hurdles again putting millions of families across the country at risk of losing their coverage.

“By estimates, 14 million people across the country are estimated to lose Medicaid coverage within a year after the emergency ends, that’s about 7 million children nationwide, who are at risk of losing this coverage, being uninsured, and potentially missing out on critical health care needs.

“For the state of California, according to our own department of health care services, an estimated 2.3 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries will lose their Medi-Cal coverage after the emergency ends. That would translate to roughly 800,000 and up to 1.2 million children losing their Medi-Cal coverage in California.

“This will disproportionately impact children of color who are more likely to rely on Medi-Cal for coverage Medi-Cal is the primary source of coverage for Latinx and Native American children. 75 percent of the more than five million kids in Medi-Cal are kids of color.

Gaps in coverage mean disruption in a child’s health care, so much so, that they’ll miss out on critical preventive and primary care services that are especially important for our youngest children.

“We’re here today because we need to help families keep their children’s and their own medical coverage as we look to come out of this public health emergency.

“Keeping families enrolled in health care is essential to ensuring that their children are healthy and that their care is not disrupted. Consistent access to healthcare is necessary for all of us to be healthy and to thrive, particularly during this pandemic, that we have seen has exacerbated mental health issues for our young people.

“Also, children still need to catch up on certain health needs like their vaccinations, their well child visits, that we know were not only missed during this pandemic, but that our state has not done a good enough job in ensuring that they’re accessing those preventive services, but this is particularly important during the first few years of a child’s life.

“Those first few years is when 90 percent of a child’s brain development occurs, so that path for healthy childhood development depends on those frequent, timely well-child visits and screenings, that any disruption in coverage will disrupt. So, during the time when health services are helping keep our family members alive, when we all want to keep our children on the right track, developmentally, keeping kids covered is the right thing to do.

“At The Children’s Partnership we have worked with Assemblymember Blanca Rubio to introduce AB-2402. This piece of legislation will allow children enrolled in Medi-Cal to stay enrolled without making their families jump through administrative hurdles and will keep them enrolled up to age five. Through the bill, multi-year continuous coverage children will have the opportunity to not miss the 14 well child visits recommended for their healthy development.

“We are fortunate that the Senate has included this policy in their budget priorities that are currently under negotiations with the Assembly.

“The legislation passed unanimously in the California Assembly Appropriations committee, and it will next be heard by the full Assembly and hopefully move on to the Senate.

“When three out of four Medi-Cal children are children of color we have an opportunity for our state to advance an anti-racist approach to medical enrollment, one that removes barriers for families, and gives every child a healthy start, beginning with ensuring that coverage is stable and continuous,” said Alvarez.

The other speakers resonated, adding points relevant to various ethnicities.

The speakers urged families and children to reach out to their counties through phone or online portals.

Families could go online to Calwin (https://www.mybenefitscalwin.org/) or the Covered California site (https://coveredca.com) for California residents, and update their addresses and their names so that the package is sent to them without delays as there are renewal timelines, and there could be a potential for ‘loss of coverage’ to happen in case the renewal deadlines are not met. Other states residents could reach out to their respective counties or affordable healthcare sites.