A pair of bills have been introduced by U.S. Senators to help remove some barriers to Medicaid and Medicare coverage for pre-trial jail inmates.
As reported in a NACo blog post:
The first piece of legislation, titled the Equity in Pre-Trial Medicaid Coverage Act (S. 2628) and sponsored by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), would amend the Social Security Act to remove limitations on Medicaid coverage for pre-trial inmates of public institutions. The second piece of legislation, titled the Restoring Health Benefits for Justice-Involved Individuals Act (S.2626) and sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), would take similar steps to remove inmate limitations on benefits under Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Veterans’ Affairs health services.
For more information:
Legislation introduced to protect federal health benefits for pre-trial individuals (NACo Blog)
Inmate health care and the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy will be topics of discussion at the 2019 MACo Winter Conference session, “Inmate Healthcare: Sorting Fact from Fiction.”
The 2019 MACo Winter Conference, “Building for the Future,” will be held on December 4-6, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Hotel in Cambridge, Maryland.
Learn more about MACo’s Winter Conference:
