Issue Briefs | Mar 2, 2022

Reshaping the Narrative on Public Charge to Reach Immigrant Populations That Need Affordable Health Insurance

 Julian Teixeira, GMMB and Allison Orris, Manatt Health

Many immigrants and their families are concerned that enrolling in Medicaid/CHIP, Marketplace, and other public health insurance programs will run afoul of public charge rules and jeopardize their
immigration status. These fears remain despite the fact that the administration has reinstated longstanding public charge guidance that does not consider the use of Medicaid/CHIP benefits (other than government-funded institutionalization for long-term care) or Marketplace coverage in a public charge determination. This issue brief, the third in a series, Supporting Health Equity and Affordable Health Coverage for Immigrant Populations, provides an overview of the status of the public charge rule and presents strategies to help connect eligible individuals to affordable coverage.


Expert Perspectives

May 24, 2023

State Dashboards to Monitor the Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Coverage Requirement

The unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement represents the largest nationwide coverage transition since the Affordable Care Act, with significant health equity implications. Given the intense focus on coverage transitions during the unwinding, some states have initiated plans to publish a data dashboard to monitor progress. To date, the District of Columbia and 15 states have published unwinding data in a visual dashboard format (this does not include states with pre-existing enrollment dashboards that don’t specifically identify unwinding cohorts). This expert perspective now includes an interactive map with the links to all the dashboards and states publishing CMS unwinding reports. SHVS will continue to update the EP and map as more states publish their unwinding data.