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TMIQ Today: Arkansas Medicaid & Postpartum Coverage · The Most Important Question

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Everybody wants to hold a new baby. Personally, I love to sniff new babies, but almost nobody checks on the mom. In Arkansas, like many other states, Medicaid will pay for the birth.
• 0:17
  But in Arkansas, the mother's Medicaid healthcare coverage stops sixty days later, while the window where mothers actually die runs out to a year. It's not a doctor shortage. It's not a money problem.
• 0:28
  It's, and this will surprise you, a date that somebody picked. Here's the thing, though. Arkansas' own legislature had a bill last year to extend coverage to a full year, and a Senate committee just let the bill die.
• 0:41
  Here's Arkansas' own rule book. Medicaid coverage lasts until the end of the month that the sixtieth day postpartum falls. That is some Gandalf shit. Um, but here's the CDC's death reviews.
• 0:53
  More than a quarter of pregnancy-related deaths happen between six weeks and a year after the birth. The leading cause of those deaths is mental health. Two Arkansas Republicans wrote the bill to extend it to a year.
• 1:07
  Their own House passed it, but it died in a Senate committee, not on the floor. It didn't even get a vote.
• 1:14
  Meanwhile, forty other states, plus D.C., which should be a state, already provided a full year of coverage back in twenty twenty-three.
• 1:22
  So look, today, if you need it, first things first, call one-eight-three-three-TLC-MAMA. It is free twenty-four/seven. Or send it to one new parent you know. It is hard.
• 1:32
  But then also please check out and call your reps about Representative Lauren Underwood's Momnibus Act. [upbeat music]