Congressional 'Tri-Caucus' Urges HHS to Protect Medicaid Coverage and Access During Unwinding

Recently, the Chairs of the the Congressional Tri-Caucus – the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) – penned a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra calling for state and federal action to ensure that low-income individuals do not lose their health care coverage during the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement. 

In total, more than 60 lawmakers wrote Secretary Becerra calling for: (1) state and federal action to keep families in America covered as Medicaid’s continuous coverage requirement ends; (2) defining and enforcing states' legal obligations to prevent terminations; and (3) providing state and territory performance data at the end of each month. 

"An August 2022 report by the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) estimates that 15 million people will lose Medicaid if the program operates as it did in the past, including nearly 5 million Latinos, more than 2 million African Americans, and nearly 1 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Already deep health disparities will worsen, due to preventable losses in health coverage. More than half of the people of color and three-fourths of the children whom ASPE projects to lose coverage will remain eligible for Medicaid but be terminated procedurally, because of state and territory administrative burdens."

"To prevent a major civil rights and health equity disaster, we believe that you should set the bar high in clearly defining and enforcing states’ and territories’ legal obligations to prevent eligible beneficiaries from losing coverage. Such clarity will give states and territories strong new incentives for improving their policies to better protect eligible families."