HOUSTON – A lot of children and moms in our area who are on Medicaid may lose access to their doctors in 2025.
In total, 450,000 of the state’s most vulnerable kids and pregnant women may lose access to some of the top pediatric providers in Texas.
Amanda Navarette uses the Texas Children’s Hospital STAR (Medicaid) for her daughter and was enrolled herself during her pregnancy and postpartum.
“If it’s taken away… I’ll definitely be struggling with having to cover the costs of taking care of my daughter and taking her to the appointments,” Navarette said.
“We’re obviously very disturbed about the potential outcome,” said Michael Murphy, President of Texas Children’s Health Plan. “When you find somebody, you can work well with to really navigate the health care system effectively, and you have to break that bond and go find somebody new and start all over in that process. That is highly, highly disruptive to everybody’s personal lives.”
It could be most disruptive for parents of children with disabilities who have built an entire medical team, and in some cases have specialists who may only exist at a facility like Texas Children’s Hospital.
“When you have a high dependency where you need to see that specialist on a regular recurring basis at a high frequency, that’s very, very difficult to manage,” Murphy said. “The kids are going to suffer as part of that process, and that certainly isn’t acceptable.”
Source: Texas Children’s and other pediatric providers may lose ties with Medicaid / Click 2 Houston