Health Care Reform Must Protect Our Vulnerable Homeless Youth

As the health care reform process continues, Congress should remember the wide-ranging and acute health care needs of one of the nation’s most vulnerable populations, unaccompanied homeless youth. These youth are most often the victims of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse that led them, unfortunately, to their most attractive alternative, the streets.  When their health care needs are not dealt with in a more preventative or immediate way, the result is more serious and costly.  Health reform provides a seminal opportunity to ensure that all children – particularly the most vulnerable – are able to secure health care coverage that meets their needs. Health care coverage for unaccompanied homeless youth is a public investment with a significant return to both these children and society as a whole.  Therefore, we ask the Congress in its forthcoming deliberations to:

1. Insure all kids: Health reform provides an opportunity to ensure that all children, including unaccompanied homeless youth, have comprehensive health care coverage that is easily accessible.
2. Strengthen Medicaid and CHIP:  As an essential step in  making sure that all kids have accessible and comprehensive coverage, health care reform should build on public policy options that work by strengthening and expanding Medicaid and CHIP to reach all vulnerable children and youth at least up to age 21.
3. Assist youth emerging from foster care: To help youth emerging from foster care, many of who become homeless, Medicaid coverage should be gradually expanded to reach this highly vulnerable population.
4. Reach vulnerable young adults: To correct the current problem of most young people losing public health insurance when they reach age 19, health care reform should expand Medicaid to cover poor and low-income young adults, including unaccompanied homeless youth.
5. Provide outreach services to street youth: To help unaccompanied homeless youth learn about their health care and insurance options and overcome their estrangement from ‘regular’ sources of care, which is a barrier to their overall well-being, health care reform should support engagement by skillful outreach workers to provide these youth with guidance and direction for obtaining much needed health care.
6. Train the health care workforce: To ensure the special attention required to address the needs of groups such as unaccompanied homeless youth, health care reform should improve health care access for vulnerable populations by supporting more extensive training of the health care workforce in dealing with their needs.
7. Recognize the unaccompanied homeless youth as a vulnerable population: To make sure that their needs are explicitly addressed, health care reform should include specific reference to "unaccompanied homeless youth" in those sections of the health care reform legislation that reference vulnerable populations, including provision relates to public health, prevention, primary caret raining, and others.
8. Reduce administrative barriers: To reduce costs, alleviate needless suffering and eliminate impediments to health care access, health care reform should simplify application and enrollment procedures, especially in programs of special importance to unaccompanied homeless youth such as Medicaid and CHIP.  Recognizing the barriers, automatic enrollment would provide an invaluable benefit to these extremely vulnerable children and youth.

Congressional deliberations on health care reform are currently in full sing in all the major relevant committees.  We urge you to contact your Senators and U.S. Representative immediately to request that they address the health care needs of our homeless youth by supporting  the policies described above in the emerging legislation. We need to get the job done and ensure that the country’s commitment to reducing the number of uninsured children remains a top federal priority.  A list of Members of the two Senate and three House committees working on this legislation is attached.

For more information, please contact Terry Modglin at (202) 783-7949 x3109.