By Maggie Clark and Kay Johnson Last month, policymakers and advocates marked the fifth-annual Black Maternal Health Week and called attention to the policy changes that can help put an end to the country’s increasing and unacceptably high rates of maternal mortality, especially for Black women who die from pregnancy-related causes at a rate more […]
Today marks the start of a significant policy change that will extend lifesaving health coverage to hundreds of thousands of pregnant and postpartum people each year: the American Rescue Plan’s option to extend postpartum coverage from 60 days to one year after the end of pregnancy. CMS announced today that Louisiana was the first state […]
Among all the Medicaid beneficiaries who’ve had their health coverage protected through the COVID-19 public health emergency, pregnant women stand out, new data released from CMS show. As readers of the SayAhhh! Blog know, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act included a “continuous coverage” provision that linked receipt of enhanced federal Medicaid and CHIP funding […]
The 2022 state legislative season is nearing its end in the coming weeks, and this year we’ve continued to see significant efforts in a broad range of states working to extend the Medicaid postpartum coverage from the current cutoff of just 60 days to a full 12 months after the end of the pregnancy. Regular […]
The rate of women who died during pregnancy or shortly after birth increased significantly during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics, and Black women continued to experience maternal death at rates more than twice the national average. In 2020, there were 861 women […]
CMS recently announced $49.4 million in outreach grants available to connect eligible children and parents to Medicaid and CHIP coverage, and for the first time, specifically included outreach to pregnant people as one of the target groups. This is an important step, both for reaching eligible but uninsured pregnant people, and for facilitating access to […]
