By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, July 17
Aiming to ease current barriers to enrollment, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee has proposed letting states use Social Security Administration data to confirm whether people applying for Medicaid are U.S. citizens.
Currently, applicants are required to show their birth certificates, passports, or naturalization documents.
Several states, including Kansas, have attributed recent declines in Medicaid enrollment to families having trouble rounding up the needed documents.
The ability to use Social Security databases could make the process easier for state officials to decide questions of eligibility.
“This is a step in the right direction,” said Donna Cohen Ross, a policy analyst who”s tracking the State Children”s Health Insurance (SCHIP) Reauthorization Act for the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities.
“The process would be less burdensome for the applicant, the beneficiary and the states,” she said.
Language in the chairman”s “mark up” of the SCHIP bill also directs states to add people to their Medicaid rolls while issues surrounding their citizenship and identity are being resolved. The committee chairman is Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
“States aren”t allowed to do that now,” Ross said. “So people who get caught up in the delays that come with trying to round up birth certificates and other documentation either don”t get
or they put off
the health care they need.”
The language would require states to extend Medicaid to applicants who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but who have not been able to come up with the documents they need to prove their citizenship.
After 90 days, those who still could not prove their citizenship would be dropped from the rolls after 30 more days.
Late last year, the Kansas Health Policy Authority officials blamed the current proof-of-citizenship requirement, enacted in July last year, for an 18,000-to-20,000-person drop in Medicaid enrollment.
Health policy authority spokeswoman Megan Ingmire said the agency has been reviewing the proposed SCHIP bill but hasn”t seen all its provisions.
The Finance Committee
is expected to begin deliberations on the bill
on Thursday morning. U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., serves on the panel. He didn”t immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposed changes in proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Thus far, key committee members have reached a bipartisan agreement to increase SCHIP funding by $35 billion over five years by raising the tobacco tax by 61 cents per pack, from 39 cents to $1.
Democrats in the Senate and House have been pushing for a $50 billion increase in spending over five years.
Bush administration officials last week said they will encourage the president to veto the legislation. Parts of the bill, they argued, would cause some families to drop their private insurance for public coverage.
In Kansas, SCHIP insures about 35,000 children; Medicaid insures 179,000 children.
-Dave Ranney is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at
dranney@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 128.