For Our Children
All Young People Deserve Health Care
At Children's Defense Fund, our commitment to equity is at the
heart of what we do. It is why our organization works at a deeper
level to address certain social determinants and inequities that can
harm the health of children who have fewer privileges than their
peers.
CDF has an agenda around which there should be no controversy. We
believe every child should have access to healthy food. We believe
every child should be able to receive a high-quality education in
schools and play safely on playgrounds. We believe every child should
be shielded from some of the dangerous aspects of social media.
And we believe that every young person should have access to quality,
affordable health care. Full stop.
So, you can imagine the concern I have felt reading numerous
headlines, like these, over the last two weeks: "Kids in many
states wrongly removed from Medicaid," wrote The Washington Post
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. "Many children may have lost Medicaid coverage," The New
York Times detailed. "
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An 'obscene' number of kids are losing Medicaid
coverage," reported CNN.
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We are going backward. America is going backward. It must stop.
On this singular issue, there are devastating outcomes that can occur
if every child does not have access to health care. Georgetown
University's Center for Children and Families (CCF) notes when
children are uninsured, they are more likely to have unmet medical and
dental needs that can diminish their quality of life.
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Unfortunately, that prospect is becoming real as KFF, formerly known
as the Kaiser Family Foundation, reports a spike in the number of
children who have lost that basic protection: KFF says at least
1.1 million children (about the population of Montana) have already
been dropped from Medicaid coverage in America this year. And that
data only reflects the situation in fifteen states. Georgetown CCF
researchers indicate up to 6.7 million kids across the country are at
risk of losing Medicaid benefits.
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Why is this happening?
States have been allowed to, once again, cull Medicaid rolls of
residents they believe no longer qualify for the program. States were
given the opportunity to make these determinations when a pandemic
relief program expired earlier this year, according to KFF.
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This has left young people in limbo as their health care, in many
cases, has been taken away thanks to paperwork mistakes and
technological malfunctions.
Some states, like Texas, are making Medicaid decisions at an
unnecessary, breakneck speed. Our team there is aggressively
advocating for Medicaid expansion and helping to make sure eligible
children and families have lifesaving health care coverage, as the
Tyler Morning Telegraph showed last month.
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"[The state is] disenrolling many, many eligible kids at the
cost of more quickly disenrolling the few who are no longer going to
be eligible," CDF-Texas Health Policy Manager Adrienne Lloyd
recently told both Spectrum News 1 Austin and The New York Times.
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This is completely unacceptable.
We all know who stands to lose the most in this situation: poor Black
and Brown young people. It is unfair for them to face yet another
setback in a society that deals them obstacle after obstacle to
overcome compared to their peers. The ability to live a healthy life,
in the world's wealthiest country, should be made no harder for
them than anyone else.
I am encouraged that President Joe Biden's administration has
urged officials to pause procedural disenrollments of Medicaid in
states where their systems have been deemed faulty, per Axios.
However, more must be done.
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State and federal lawmakers should be working to ensure ALL young
people, no matter their socioeconomic background, have access to
quality, affordable health care. We must advance innovative policies
and practices that aim to make that goal an attainable reality.
Furthermore, we must widen the scope of our work to address all the
social determinants that play such a significant role in the health
outcomes of our children and youth.
Let's restore universal free meals in our schools. Let's
incentivize behavioral health care for young people. Let's
invest in more environmental justice initiatives.
After all, when our children and youth succeed, we all succeed.
Let's give them the healthy start they need.
For our children,
Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson
President and CEO
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