Coalition Letter Supporting Permanent Extension of Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA)

Dear Members of the Commerce Committee,

We, the undersigned organizations, are writing in support of an extension and improvement of the Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA) program.

Established in 1988, the TMA program provides temporary health care coverage to families who have become ineligible for Medicaid because of earnings, in many cases because they have left welfare for work. Like child care, health care is an important work support that facilitates the entry of families into the workforce. Unfortunately, the TMA program expires at the end of this year. An extension of TMA constitutes an essential component of any legislation that would reauthorize the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.

While we welcome the Energy and Commerce Committee’s effort to extend the TMA program for one year (a proposal also included in the Administration’s fiscal year 2003 budget), we urge you to either make the TMA program permanent or, at minimum, to extend TMA for the same period of time as the Congress intends to reauthorize the TANF program. This would guarantee the important role that TMA plays in helping many families transition from welfare and forgo the need for Congress to address this issue again next year.

We also urge you to provide states additional flexibility to simplify the enrollment and retention of working families in TMA. Currently, states have little ability to ease federal rules that often discourage families from obtaining health coverage through TMA. Bills enjoying bipartisan support in both the House and Senate (H.R. 2775 and S. 1269) would provide states a number of such simplification options that would improve participation in TMA by eligible families at modest cost. (In fact, some of these options were previously reported out of the Committee in 2000). We ask that you adopt all of these bipartisan simplification provisions as part of any TMA extension.

Together, a long-term extension of TMA and additional state simplification options would ensure that the families who qualify for TMA have access to the health care they need as they initially enter the workforce. This, in turn, would strengthen our ability to meet the goal of welfare reform to effectively move more families from welfare to work.

Sincerely,