States Need to Improve Language Access for Medicaid Renewals

From National Immigration Law Center

"In March 2023, after a three-year pause, states resumed terminating the eligibility of Medicaid recipients.  These terminations signaled the restart of eligibility redeterminations, which had been halted during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Enrollees who face the termination of their eligibility are already up against significant administrative barriers but people with limited English proficiency (LEP) are more likely to lose Medicaid coverage during this unwinding process even if they remain eligible for Medicaid due to language barriers and ineffective communication.  States have an opportunity to remove these barriers and avoid worsening access to in-language explanations and applications so that everyone, regardless of how much money they have, where they are born, or what language they speak, can access the health care they need to thrive.

Under federal civil rights laws, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act states have obligations to ensure that individuals have meaningful access to their federally funded programs, including Medicaid.  A recent letter from Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (HHS OCR), emphasized that states must abide by language access requirements during the unwinding to prevent individuals with LEP from losing coverage.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has reminded states that regulations require state Medicaid programs to provide in-language oral interpretation and written translations to people with LEP.  Given that 989 percent of people with LEP are people of color, failure to provide these protections will exacerbate racial health disparities.  To identify trends of how states provide information for obtaining language assistance through call centers and on state Medicaid home pages, we analyzed how people with LEP may try to initiate their Medicaid redetermination.  Our analysis of call centers and Medicaid websites across all 50 states uncovered some concerning trends."

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