Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that Michigan can begin offering Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage for 12 months after pregnancy to an estimated 16,000 pregnant and postpartum individuals through a new state plan opportunity made available by the American Rescue Plan.
Michigan joins Louisiana, Virginia, New Jersey, and Illinois in extending Medicaid and CHIP coverage for 12 months after pregnancy. CMS is also working with another ten states and the District of Columbia to extend postpartum coverage for 12 months after pregnancy, including: California, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. As a result of these efforts, as many as 720,000 pregnant and postpartum individuals across the United States could be guaranteed Medicaid and CHIP coverage for 12 months after pregnancy thanks to the American Rescue Plan. Medicaid covers 42 percent of all births in the nation, and this new option for states to extend Medicaid and CHIP coverage marks the Biden-Harris Administration’s latest effort to address the nation’s crisis in pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity, and disparities in maternal health outcomes, by opening the door to postpartum care for hundreds of thousands of people.
On Wednesday, April 12, 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris convened a White House meeting on maternal health with Cabinet secretaries and agency leaders – including CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure – to discuss the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach to addressing maternal mortality, morbidity, and disparities.
Approval of the Michigan state plan amendment can be found here: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/spa/downloads/MI-22-0100.pdf
See the latest White House Fact Sheet on Additional Actions in Response to Vice President Harris’s Call to Action on Maternal Health
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Contact: CMS Media Relations
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