2023-04-25 00:33:38
Miami, Apr 24 (EFE).- With the protections due to the pandemic expiring this month, millions of children in the US, many of them Latinos, face the risk of being left without health insurance, but not because they are not eligible , but because their parents “drown” in the renewal procedures, Leo Cuello, a health expert at Georgetown University, explained to EFE.
Of the Hispanic minors who will lose their health insurance, almost three out of four (72%) will be “because of the process, not because of their eligibility,” Cuello lamented.
The research professor from the McCourt School of Public Policy of that university stressed that the vast majority of children who do not have health insurance due to their parents’ work meet all the requirements of the Medicaid government programs for low-income families and CHIP for children.
“These are people who are still eligible, but their insurance ends up being canceled because they can’t complete the renewal process,” he said.
He specified that Latino families “are more likely” to have problems with the annual renewal process, and emphasized that among the difficulties are the lack of time, the lack of knowledge of English, the change of address and the informality of the jobs of many Latinos. , which prevents them from easily determining and verifying their salaries.
He added that there are also states that tend to facilitate the process or make an automatic renewal -if families maintain the economic income requirements, among others to qualify-, but there are others that make the process difficult.
The expert participated this year in a study by the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University that determined that millions of children may be left without health insurance as of this month, when the protections adopted by the pandemic began to expire.
According to Cuello, the most affected will be Latino and African-American minors.
He explained that 27% of those who will lose health insurance will be Latinos, a number well above the percentage of the Hispanic population in the country (which is around 19%).
In addition, of those who lose insurance due to a paper problem, 35% will be Latinos, an even more disproportionate percentage, he said.
With the pandemic, a record 54% of children were insured under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
This happened because the protection measures applied since March 2020 prohibited cancellations and ordered the automatic renewal of these insurances under the covid-19 emergency.
However, those protections expired this month.
Cuello says that the pandemic was in that sense like a restaurant where many diners entered, but none came out, and now everyone will have to go through the process to stay, which will create a bottleneck.
He recalled that the maximum number of people who have lost their insurance in a year is 2 million, and on this occasion an “historical record” of 15 million people is estimated, between adults and children.
He pointed out that much has been said about the millions of adults who will lose this insurance, but little about minors, who can represent high medical bills for their families if they lose it.
In states like Georgia, where the government did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, to benefit more adults, 70% of children’s insurance will be subject to renewal.
There are a dozen states that have refused to accept federal money from the so-called Obamacare to expand Medicaid, among them are also Florida and Texas, with a large Latino population.
States have until May 2024 to verify Medicaid eligibility for most people enrolled in the program, including more than 34 million children.
Approximately four million children enrolled in CHIP-funded Medicaid will also need to renew their coverage.
Cuello advised parents not to panic because most children are still eligible and called on them to get through the process and ask for help.
He asked families to update their addresses if they moved to receive the paperwork and answer the forms sent to them even if they think they have errors, because the process only stops when the beneficiaries stop answering.
“The State ends when someone does not answer it,” he emphasized, noting that if there are errors or shortcomings, the government has the obligation to contact them again.
(c) EFE Agency
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