Confusing paperwork means many toddlers left without health insurance

Babies who might otherwise be entirely eligible for health insurance under Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program aren’t getting it after their first birthday. That hiccup is mostly bureaucratic, experts told Kaiser Health News.

The issue comes when parents have to re-register their toddlers in whatever program covered them after birth. Women who are covered by CHIP or Medicaid also pass that coverage on to their children for a year, but it then must be renewed.

“Many people lose Medicaid coverage for procedural reasons,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senior Health Policy Advisor Shelby Gonzales said.

If some part of that process is not completed, babies can lose out on coverage. And that could mean less frequent childhood checkups, delayed vaccination and more expensive doctors visits and prescriptions when they get sick. Those issues become especially problematic for low-income parents and their kids, who are the ones generally covered under these programs in the first place.

According to the Urban Institute, kids between 1 and 2 years old are less likely to have health insurance than babies under 1. A Connecticut organization found that, in 2008 and 2009, 42 percent of babies covered under Medicaid at birth lost their insurance when they turned 1, even when they were still eligible for the coverage. But only 6 percent of babies whose parents were enrolled in employee-sponsored coverage had the same problem.

Some parents might not know they have to renew their babies’ coverage or might forget because their child’s birthday doesn’t coincide with the enrollment dates of the rest of the family.

A big part of the solution to these automatic coverage terminations could be an update in computer systems. Some states could move to automatic renewal systems or find better ways to alert parents and pediatricians that the one-year renewal period is approaching, according to Kaiser.