Income volatility causes many children to cycle into and out of eligibility for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), putting these children at risk for injurious gaps in coverage, researchers report in a Health Affairs web exclusive published Aug. 8. Unlike previous research findings, this study attributes the phenomenon to changes in eligibility status as well as administrative barriers.
Two-thirds of all surveyed children were eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP, or both, at some point during the four-year period from 1996 to 2000, in the early years of SCHIP. Almost half of the surveyed children (48 percent) experienced interruptions in eligibility, and 41 percent of these “sometimes eligible” children had multiple spells of eligibility. In addition, children also moved frequently from eligibility for one program (Medicaid or SCHIP) to eligibility for the other during the survey period. The study’s authors encouraged Congress to protect children from gaps in coverage. Read the abstract.
