ASPEN, Colo. — The White House’s top Medicaid official said 46 states have implemented policies providing Medicaid coverage 12 months postpartum. Now, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said she’s laser-focused on seeing the four remaining states follow suit.
“This is pretty fast adoption of a new program,” said Brooks-LaSure, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, during an interview with CQ Roll Call on Saturday during the Aspen Ideas: Health conference. The fiscal 2023 omnibus appropriations law made permanent a program providing an extension of Medicaid postpartum care. Currently, Idaho and Iowa are close to having their policies take effect, while Wisconsin is awaiting feedback on a three-month coverage waiver.
Only Arkansas has not taken additional action. Brooks-LaSure acknowledged that implementing the change in the remaining states may take time, in part because of differences in how states seek changes to their Medicaid programs. The holdouts will come on board, she said, by “really helping people to see the difference in maternal health and also how it’s good not just for the women, not just for the children, but also for providers to make sure they get the reimbursement for the care they deliver.
” Brooks-LaSure emphasizes the same approach of the benefits to patients and doctors when referring to the Medicaid expansion implemented under the 2010 health care law. More than a decade after that law’s passage, 10 states have yet to.
