Biden Administration Continues to Support School-Based Medicaid Programs

As part of the President’s FY25 budget, the U.S. Department of Education released a great one-pager ED promoting the school-based Medicaid program. The document describes how $4-6 billion in Medicaid funding goes to LEAs annually as well as gives 3 examples of how states that have expanded their SBS programs have seen increased revenues that they have been able to reinvest in healthcare service delivery in LEAs.

They also are proposing  “a new suite of efforts to further the reach and impact of school-based services through Medicaid, in order to bring crucial physical, mental, and behavioral health services to schools to meet the needs of students through routine health screenings, preventive care, physical, speech language, and occupational therapies, and more.” 

The Administration is currently running a competitive grant program for States that are interested in expanding their Medicaid programs beyond IDEA services as well as a competition for states that have already billing for non-IEP services to continue adding Medicaid reimbursable services to their billing or that are interested in streamlining their systems to make it administrative simpler for districts to be reimbursed.