Garcia Wilburn calls on Braun, FSSA to protect Hoosiers’ Medicaid coverage in disaster-struck counties
Today, State Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn (D-Fishers) called on the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) and Gov. Mike Braun to take immediate steps to keep disaster-affected Hoosiers from losing their Medicaid coverage and in-home care during the recovery from this month's disaster.
Beginning Aug. 11, a derecho with at least two tornadoes and historic flooding swept across Indiana, killing at least seven Hoosiers and displacing more than 1,000. On Aug. 15, President Trump approved a federal Emergency Declaration covering 53 counties. In Northwest Indiana, the storms caused the largest power outage in NIPSCO's history. Ten thousand households remain without electricity nearly two weeks later.
Garcia Wilburn, a member of the House Committee on Public Health, is asking the state to take three specific actions for residents in the affected counties:
Pause procedural Medicaid terminations. Direct FSSA to suspend disenrollments for beneficiaries in disaster-declared counties who cannot complete a renewal or return requested paperwork because of the storm, so no eligible Hoosier loses coverage over a form that washed away, a notice that never arrived or lack of access to the virtual FSSA Benefits Portal.
Extend deadlines for waiver level-of-care assessments. Extend the deadlines for level-of-care assessments and reassessments under Indiana's Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) waivers, and allow them to be completed by phone or video, so seniors, people with disabilities and medically fragile Hoosiers do not lose in-home services.
Use every available tool to do it. Move now on the steps the state can take on its own, and pursue federal flexibilities, including an 1135 waiver and a disaster relief state plan amendment, that make these protections airtight.
"FSSA's communication problems with Medicaid beneficiaries were making headlines before this storm ever hit," Garcia Wilburn said. "Now we have families who lost everything in the water, and the state is still asking them for paperwork. We should be helping these Hoosiers hold onto their coverage, not letting a deadline finish what the flood started.
"In Hamilton County, Muncie and across the flood zone, people are pulling water out of their homes and searching for whatever documents they have left. Nobody should lose their health coverage because a renewal notice is at the bottom of a flooded basement. FSSA has the authority to pause these terminations, and it should do it today.
"You can't ask someone in Gary or Munster who has been without power for nearly two weeks to answer a notice they never got, on a portal they can't log into. For seniors and people with disabilities who depend on in-home care, a missed deadline means losing life-sustaining services."
Indiana used these exact tools during the COVID-19 emergency, when FSSA allowed waiver level-of-care determinations to be done by phone and extended annual reassessment deadlines by six months so people would not lose their in-home care. Other states have paused Medicaid redeterminations for residents of disaster-hit counties after hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes, and federal rules specifically allow states to do so when a natural disaster makes it impossible for people to respond.
Garcia Wilburn also pointed to a step the Braun administration has already taken for the same disaster victims: On Aug. 17, the Indiana Department of Insurance called for a 60-day moratorium on insurance companies canceling any policies of Hoosiers directly affected by the storms, along with a suspension of late-payment penalties.
“The governor has already made sure families won't lose their insurance because a bill came due in the middle of a flood,” Garcia Wilburn said. “Their Medicaid deserves the same protection. Gov. Braun has declared the emergency and secured the federal declaration. Directing FSSA to protect coverage is the natural next step, and it's one he can take now.”