Health Insurance Coverage and Use of Family Planning Services among Current and Former Foster Youth: Implications of the Health Care Reform Law.

Thousands of young people exit foster care each year not because they are returned home to their families (reunification) or because another permanent connection has been established (adoption or legal guardianship) but because they become too old for the child welfare system. In the federal fiscal year 2010, nearly twenty-eight thousand young people aged out of foster care (US Department of Health and Human Services 2012). Youth in foster care are categorically covered by their state's Medicaid program (Geen, Sommers, and Cohen 2005). Whether this coverage continues after they age out depends in part on where they live. A provision in the 1999 Foster Care Independence Act allows but does not require states to extended eligibility for Medicaid coverage to former foster youth until their twenty-first birthday if they were still in foster care when they turned eighteen.

In states that have taken advantage of this "Chafee option," young people remain categorically eligible for Medicaid for up to three additional years after aging out.2 By 2008 at least twenty-eight states had exercised this option (Dworsky and Havlicek 2009). In some of these states, youth automatically continue to receive medical benefits until their twenty-first birthday. In other states, however, continued receipt of medical benefits is not automatic.

For example, youth may be required to complete an initial application (Connecticut, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Washington) or reapply on an annual basis (Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas). Similarly, youth may be eligible regardless of their income (California, New Jersey. New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) or subject to an income test (Maryland and Michigan) (National Resource Center for Youth Development 2012). Although a majority of states have extended Medicaid to former foster youth through the Chafee option, youth in the states that have not done so will lose their Medicaid coverage on aging out unless they qualify based on some other status, such as having a disability, being pregnant, or being a very low-income parent (Golden and Fortuny 2011)

DMU Timestamp: February 07, 2020 23:04

Paragraph 1 0

Feb 9

2020 Angeth Makol 2020 Angeth Makol (Feb 09 2020 7:28PM) : thousands of young people leave the foster care system because they have turned 18. more

kids in foster care are categorically covered by their states medicaid program. whether this continues after they turn 18 is usually depended on where they live. foster care independence act allows but down not require states to extend the eligibility for medicaid coverage to former foster care kids until there 21st birthday.

Paragraph 1, Sentence 1 0