The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be providing $32 million n awards to help 38 community organizations in 27 states enroll eligible children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as part of the Connecting Kids to Coverage campaign. Awardees include states, school districts, and local community organizations from across the country in areas where access to health coverage has been lagging. Award organizations also include indigenous nations and rural agencies.
CMS has made a broad push to ensure that eligible children are enrolled in the CHIP program as part of a mandate in the Affordable Care Act. According to the National Health Interview Survey, only 4.5 percent of children remained uninsured in 2015.
One million of the grant funding will go to the Cherokee Nation to help enroll children and educate parents about the CHIP program. Children that are part of indigenous nations can often be at a disadvantage when it comes to finding programs or services that are available to help them.
Another $990,000 will go to Kansas State University to fund efforts to improve rural enrollment in the program in a state that is generally hostile to earned benefit programs. The Los Angeles Unified School District also received almost a million dollars for children in that urban school district.
