Children's Defense Fund

Disaster Relief Medicaid: An Urgent Priority

Many Katrina survivors who weren't eligible for help haven't had their complicated health and mental health needs treated yet at all.

With summer and the new hurricane season in full swing, the Children’s Defense Fund is committed to making sure no more children and families suffer unnecessarily from an inadequate response after a disaster as hundreds of thousands did after Hurricane Katrina. So many things could have been done differently for Katrina’s victims, and one of the most obvious would have been providing fast, simple access to health and mental health care for everyone who needed it. Our nation can and must do better next time. To make sure we do, CDF is calling on Congress to enact an urgently needed Disaster Relief Medicaid Bill. What is Disaster Relief Medicaid? It’s health and mental health coverage under the Medicaid program that could be provided immediately to survivors of a major national disaster such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina without any of the eligibility, administrative, or financial hurdles that currently prevent many disaster victims from getting the help they desperately need when they need it. One of the hard lessons we learned from the response to Hurricane Katrina is that as a nation, we’re ill-prepared to cope with human needs in the wake of a large scale national disaster. Katrina left thousands of uninsured children and families in its wake, making return to normalcy impossible. Increased rates of suicide and stress-related conditions show that nearly a year later, the storm has still left many people in danger, including many children. To those of us far removed from the storm’s aftermath, it may feel like it happened a long time ago. But to many survivors it feels like yesterday, and in terms of the medical and mental health care system in Katrina-affected areas, it feels like today since too little progress has been made. A number of states received waivers from the federal government after Katrina to provide Medicaid for some survivors, but not everyone who needed help was eligible. Many of the children and families who were able to receive Medicaid under the post-Katrina waivers may not have been able to transition to regular Medicaid or private health insurance when the short term waivers expired. Some of the waivers have already ended. Many of the survivors who weren’t eligible for help haven’t had their complicated health and mental health needs treated yet at all. Time also hasn’t lessened the survivors’ need for this care it has increased it. Studies have shown that symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome are strongest eight to 10 months after a traumatic incident. Many of Katrina’s child victims are still fixated on the storm and constantly talk about their losses, including their pets, homes, and family members, neighbors, and friends whose locations are still unknown. Some are afraid to take a bath or get scared when it rains. These children and their caregivers need quality mental health care now to help them move forward with their lives. Without immediate access to health and mental health professionals, they are in danger of losing their childhoods, their education, and their future to depression and despair. But it is not too late to act to reduce their suffering and repair their injured bodies and minds before their lives are permanently damaged. CDF’s Disaster Relief Medicaid bill which we are trying to get introduced in Congress would provide Katrina’s children and victims of future large-scale national disasters with a consistent source of funding for quality medical care for at least 24 months, and an additional 12 months if necessary, with full federal funding. This bill would also provide critical mental health coverage, which is necessary to help survivors work through the traumas they have experienced so they can resume functioning in society and in school or at work. Most importantly, this bill would prepare for future crises by allowing the President and Secretary of Health and Human Services to authorize Disaster Relief Medicaid coverage in other major national disasters. This forward looking policy would prevent the confusion, unmet need, and uncompensated care that many families and providers were forced to endure after Katrina. When the next disaster strikes, as surely it will somewhere at some time, having Disaster Relief Medicaid in place could reduce the human toll substantially. With the largest hurricanes of this year yet to come, the worry about potential disasters like an avian flu outbreak or catastrophic earthquake, and the constant threat of a terrorist attack, it’s time to make Disaster Relief Medicaid reality now.

 

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