During this session, an expert panel discussed policies and considerations for state Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) multi-year continuous eligibility (CE) approaches, which are designed to mitigate churn. Churn occurs when individuals disenroll and re-enroll in health coverage within a short period of time, leading to disruptions in coverage. With the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency continuous coverage requirement, states are resuming work on other priority areas, including how to prevent churn on a more routine basis. A few states have received Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services approval to implement section 1115 demonstration programs to provide multi-year CE for children age 0 to 6 years, and several others have demonstration requests pending approval. Panelists described lessons learned about CE during the public health emergency, policy and programmatic considerations for designing and implementing multi-year CE policies, and factors that will be important in monitoring and evaluating the demonstrations.
Panelists included:
- Cindy Mann, JD, partner at Manatt Health
- Emma Sandoe, PhD, MPH, Medicaid director with the Oregon Health Authority
- Laura Barrie Smith, PhD, senior research associate in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute
