PHLP Urges Pennsylvania to Simplify Enrollment and Renewal Practices for Child Health Insurance

It has been widely reported that a significant number of Pennsylvanians, primarily children, are losing coverage at a time when they can least afford it. PHLP is working with others to immediately halt these unnecessary and harmful terminations, and has re-issued a briefing paper about simplifying enrollment and renewal practices. Last month the Pittsburgh Post Gazette profiled a PHLP client, Alexander, a 5-year-old boy with leukemia whose mother carefully updated his Medical Assistance reenrollment forms, twice, but still lost his health insurance because the county assistance office declared that the paperwork was missing. PHLP was able to help Alexander’s family restore his health coverage, but his case is one of thousands. Nearly 32,000 Pennsylvanians were cut from Medical Assistance between August and September 2011. 18,000 of them were children.

PHLP believes that simplifying enrollment and renewal in Medical Assistance makes sense for families, as well as overwhelmed county assistance offices struggling to meet increased demands for assistance.