Texas could overhaul special education funding
Plus: Kentucky parents demand reform; Mississippi advocates join fight against Medicaid cuts; and Florida investigation finds disabled kids underserved on 'healthy kids' insurance
Medical Motherhood’s news round up
Snippets of news and opinion from outlets around the world. Click the links for the full story.
• From Mississippi Today: “‘How can we stand by?’: Moms worry Medicaid cuts will hurt their children”
Advocates, Medicaid recipients and their family members gathered outside the Capitol Tuesday to urge both state and federal lawmakers to “protect and expand Medicaid now.”
Speakers, who held signs with slogans such as “pro-life span,” included representatives from the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, members of Care4Mississippi, parents of children on Medicaid and one 9-year-old girl.
Their presence was in response to recent federal action that threatens Medicaid funding nationwide. In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolutionthat calls for the committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare to cut $880 billion over 10 years.
[…]“Without the waivers, where can these kids and their families look for the support they need?” Stearns asked. “How can their parents hope to keep their families together and their children happy and healthy? How will Mississippi have failed them?”
One 9-year-old girl named Luciana gave testimony of how Medicaid helps her. She’s aware that the conditions she has – including autism and ADHD – are expensive. She says Medicaid saved her life during her stay in the NICU and now helps pay for medication that helps her think.
“If I didn’t have my medicines I’d feel like a blank piece of paper without any drawings,” she told the crowd. […]
• From WMKY Morehead State Public Radio: “Parents and advocates say Kentucky’s disability care system needs fixing”
In a recent Senate Standing Committee on Families and Children meeting, Kentucky lawmakers heard testimonies about the difficulty of obtaining autism care in the Commonwealth. Presenters said long wait times for diagnosis and treatment, alongside limited options throughout the country, have created an unnavigable landscape.
Rachel Moldoveanu, a former nurse practitioner and the mother of a profoundly autistic teenager, shared her story alongside practitioners and policymakers in February. Her son currently resides in a care facility in Kansas because of Kentucky’s lack of viable options. She said while attaining care for her son, she was pushed to relinquish custody of him to the state. Moldoveanu received legal counsel and was able to keep custody, but she said families like hers almost always feel like they have no other choice.
[…]Her family made the decision to place their son in that out-of-state residence because he was a danger to himself and others in their own home, and he is adjusting well. Moldoveanu said Kentucky is in dire need of a similar facility, one which accepts Medicaid and operates not-for-profit.
“I think it needs to be a facility that can serve the severe needs of our kids. I mean, my kid isn’t the only one. There are hundreds of families living day by day in crisis,” said Moldoveanu.[…]
• From WUSF: “Medically Unneccessary: Why Florida Healthy Kids doesn't work for many medically vulnerable children”
At 9 years old, Orlando resident Landon Chase has survived some pretty serious and scary things; cancer and chemotherapy are at the forefront.
His big challenge now, though, is healing from chemo, a process his mom, Erin Booth, says is being hindered and made more difficult by Florida’s children's health insurance program.
Landon was on Medicaid coverage during his cancer treatment, but like 500,000 other children in the state, he saw his coverage taken away during the Medicaid disenrollment period. Now, Landon and about 137,000 other children are receiving coverage through the Florida Healthy Kids Corp., which the state recommended for low-income families who didn’t have access to health insurance from employers and couldn’t afford federal marketplace insurance.
[…]The issue, Florida Healthy Kids only pays for eight sessions of each therapy. That’s not enough for a recovering cancer patient. Also, those eight sessions have to be completed in 60 days. Any appointments missed cannot be rescheduled after those 60 days. Landon is on a full-pay plan, which means his parents pay $260 a month for coverage, which accounts for his therapy co-pays, but that’s about it.
Now, Landon is stuck in a coverage gap, unable to get the therapies he needs to recover. Booth considered raising money to pay for the therapies out of pocket, but Booth was told that, since Landon is covered by the state, licensed practitioners can’t accept funds from another source.
[…Florida Health Kids} wasn’t written with those children in mind who need thousands of dollars worth of medical services for chronic illness or disability.
Yet after the 2023-24 Medicaid disenrollment, Florida Healthy Kids was the default referral for all children, including those who previously relied on Medicaid or CMS. […]
• From the Austin American-Statesman: “'Transformational': Texas Senate Bill 568 would overhaul special education funding”
[…]Senate Bill 568, by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, would overhaul the formulas Texas uses to budget for its 775,000 students with disabilities, increasing overall funding, offsetting schools’ costs for initial evaluations and adding new grants and teacher incentives.
[…]“This is a groundbreaking special education bill ... that I think will lead to stunningly better outcomes for a number of our 775,000 school children with disabilities," Bettencourt said.
Based on positive outcomes in other states that fund special education this way, SB 568 would require Texas to classify student need based on an eight-tiered model, rather than on the time they spend in certain educational settings.
[…]If the bill is passed, the state would send local school districts money to offset each initial disability evaluation they administer to students, an initiative Bettencourt described as crucial for early identification of disabilities. It would also double the college, career or military readiness outcomes bonus for special education programs.[…]
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