More than one million Texans, the most of whom are children, have been deprived of their Medicaid health insurance coverage in recent months as a result of administrative problems and a backlog of paperwork that needs to be processed.
As a member of the staff of the Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic in Dallas, Ana Rangel provides assistance to families who are eligible for Medicaid by assisting them in re-enrolling in the program or locating alternative insurance alternatives.
Millions of Texans Lose Health Coverage
The Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic is a federally designated health center that provides services to persons who do not have health insurance and offers fees that are distributed on a sliding scale.
Typically, families that seek Medicaid re-enrollment through Los Barrios clinics obtain a quicker response since these clinics have state eligibility workers on-site. This is something that Rangel explains.
The application procedure normally takes between ten and fifteen days at Los Barrios clinics, which is significantly less than the standard forty-five to sixty days that families that attempt to re-enroll at their own initiative endure.
Since the pandemic, Rangel claims that there has been a considerable increase in the number of applications for renewal.
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Your Gateway to Quicker Medicaid Re-Enrollment
The clinic is currently assisting with roughly one hundred or more applications each week, which is a significant increase from the sixty to seventy applications that were submitted each week prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rangel makes note of persistent difficulties, despite the fact that the processing time has been accelerated. It has been brought to her attention that the state portals that are utilized for re-enrollment frequently experience downtime, which results in further delays.
For children younger than five years old, Rangel stresses the significance of receiving pediatric care.
However, she is concerned that families are avoiding children’s checkups and medication access because of the intricacy of the re-enrollment procedure and the fear that their children may incur significant medical expenditures.
She encourages families to seek assistance from neighboring federally certified health facilities in order to assess eligibility and obtain medical care on a sliding scale, regardless of whether or not they have health insurance.
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