More children were made eligible for Medicaid because of the Affordable Care Act as of January, 2014. PA children ages 6 to 18 who live in households between 100% and 133% of the federal poverty income guidelines are now eligible for Medicaid – whereby most had previously qualified for CHIP.

PCCY and several of our policy partners published a paper in summer, 2013 with best practices and recommendations to the state about how to smoothly transfer children from CHIP to Medicaid.  The authors of the paper are the Pennsylvania Health Law Project, Community Legal Services, the PA Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children and PCCY.

The federal government permitted these PA children to retain their CHIP coverage through December 2014. As a result of our collective advocacy, the state has adopted some of our recommendations to move children from one program to the other.