Importance of Medicaid for Children

Families USA has released a new issue brief that highlights the importance of Medicaid for the healthy development of children. As the largest insurer of children in the US, Medicaid connects 37 million kids to low-cost, high-quality coverage with comprehensive benefits designed to meet a child’s individual health and developmental needs. 

Some of the highlights of the brief include:

• Medicaid is coverage low-income families can rely on. It allows them to take their children to a doctor when they are sick, to get them vaccinated on schedule, and to make sure they get routine health care and checkups. Because Medicaid offers low-income families coverage with very low premiums and cost-sharing, it ensures children are able to get the medical care they need when they need it and protects families from medical debt. For many working families whose employers don’t provide job-based insurance, Medicaid is often the only affordable source of health coverage available. 
• The Medicaid children’s health benefit – Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) - guarantees comprehensive coverage for all medically-necessary care to address the unique health and developmental needs of children. It is considered the gold standard for children’s care, covering prevention and screening as well as comprehensive treatment for illnesses and disabilities. 
• Medicaid is a critical lifeline for vulnerable children including those with special health care needs and children in the child welfare system. Medicaid offers significantly more comprehensive coverage for services and supplies for families with children who have ongoing or lifelong medical needs, special flexibility in income eligibility for children with disabilities or serious illnesses, can be used to wrap around employer-sponsored insurance, and as the dominant health insurer for children in foster care, provides a range of health care services critical for these children.
• Medicaid cuts or restructuring would be particularly harmful for children. Since children are the largest population of Medicaid enrollees, congressional proposals that would impose arbitrary cuts to Medicaid, including caps on Medicaid spending or restructuring the program as either a block grant or a per-capita cap, would have a severe and devastating impact on children’s coverage. 

Click here for the full issue brief.