As Medicaid faces the most drastic cuts of its lifetime, advocates for reproductive health, rights, and justice must take bold steps to safeguard a program that covers one in five people in the U.S. To this end, NHeLP will develop and disseminate a set of state and federal policy recommendations to improve Medicaid coverage of abortion, contraception, and pregnancy care in the immediate and long term. This is what we call the “Medicaid Repro Roadmap.”
Why are we doing this?
More than 73 million people in the country depend on Medicaid. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most states have expanded Medicaid to cover adults of reproductive age who used to fall through the cracks. Medicaid is the largest public payer of family planning services. It is also the largest single payer of births. Unfortunately, that is not the case with abortion because the Hyde Amendment generally prohibits the use of federal funds to cover abortions. Not only do we need to eliminate the Hyde Amendment and reverse state abortion bans, we must enact proactive coverage policies at the state and federal levels that build on existing protections.
For more than 55 years, NHeLP has protected and advanced the health rights of low-income and underserved individuals. Our Medicaid Repro Roadmap will offer solutions building from our history of advocating for access to health care. Should the changes to Medicaid need to be incremental, we want to offer policy recommendations that can be advanced either through legislation or administrative action. Should we have the opportunity to rewrite and revamp the whole health care system, we possess the expertise and the vision to offer the lessons learned and best practices from our long history of working in Medicaid.
How will we do this?
NHeLP will engage key stakeholders like researchers, national and state reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations, reproductive health providers, reproductive health patients, mainstream health care organizations, legal aid organizations, health care plans, and insurance administrators.
The project will undergo these main phases:
- A literature review of existing studies, reports, data, and best practices to identify policy gaps and opportunities
- Deep stakeholder engagement through the utilization of surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one-interviews
- The creation of an advisory committee who will pressure test the analysis of stakeholder recommendations
- Draft and release of report and accompanying documents
- Implementation of policies at the state and federal level
- Monitoring and evaluation of these policies
What are the end products?
- Report with recommendations for federal and state decision makers
- Fact sheets focused on particular issues
- Talking points for advocates and decision makers
These materials will support advocates and policymakers who can advance depending on their legal and political environments. If you want additional information about this project or are interested in supporting this work, please contact us at [email protected].
