With major Medicaid changes ahead, advocates want to see increased staffing for assistance offices

A group of health advocacy organizations are asking the state to improve staffing at county assistance offices, as well as to make other administrative changes the advocates say will lessen the likelihood of people losing their health coverage once the state starts “unwinding” its pandemic-era Medical Assistance. During the pandemic, individuals who got their health […]

Shapiro admin can do more as rollbacks to food and health benefits loom in Pa., experts say

Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians could lose their health insurance and nearly two million could face more food insecurity in the coming months due to two sweeping rollbacks to pandemic-era federal policies. Health care advocates argue there is at least one concrete step the state can take right now to mitigate coverage losses. One of […]

End of pandemic-era policy presents dilemmas for millions of Pa. Medicaid, CHIP recipients

About 430,000 children who are enrolled in Medicaid are at risk of losing coverage, according to Carolyn Myers, spokesperson for the children’s advocacy organization Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children. They can enroll in CHIP if they lose coverage but run the risk of being lost in the shuffle, she said. “Our concern is that cliff, because, […]

Resuming Medicaid case checks confronts 3.6M in Pennsylvania

The federal government’s pandemic-era prohibition against kicking people off Medicaid is ending, meaning that hundreds of thousands of people in Pennsylvania face losing the free health insurance in the coming year. The Harrisburg-based nonprofit Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children wants the Shapiro administration to guarantee that children up to 21 can keep their coverage for another […]

Report: More PA Kids had Health Insurance During Pandemic

A new report says during the pandemic, more children were able to keep their health insurance in the Commonwealth. The “State of Children’s Health” report – by Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children – says the gain was small, but an important reason for it is that states were not allowed to take people off of Medicaid during […]