The Office of Student Wellness and Well-being has expanded its outreach and helped more students in distress thanks to the Lynn L. Moody Endowment for Mental Health and Suicide Awareness.
^{Above: CofC students are there to listen to one another. (Photos by Mike Ledford)}
Have you ever had a friend in distress, and you don’t know what to do? It’s a problem many of us face, and we often don’t know where to turn for help.
Sadly, Lynn Luckey Moody ’93 lost her battle with mental distress and chronic illness. Her husband, Scott Moody ’91, set out to make sure more people know of the resources available to them. In 2021, he created the Lynn L. Moody Endowment for Mental Health and Suicide Awareness in honor of his wife, The fund has been making a positive impact on the health and well-being of College of Charleston students ever since.
Thanks to the Lynn Moody Fund, the Office of Student Wellness and Well-being has been able to expand its outreach and help more students in distress. The fund has also given the OSWW team the flexibility to evolve and respond to the needs of the CofC campus.
For example, initially OSWW offered in-person How to Help a Struggling Friend classes for students. The classes taught how to identify common mental health challenges, recognize signs of struggle in others, take action and find resources for more support. In its first two academic years (2022 and 2023), OSWW taught 226 students, but the team discovered that schedule conflicts precluded many students from participating. To create more flexibility for students, OSWW used the Lynn Moody Fund to create an interactive online class customized for CofC students.
The online class launched in summer 2024 and has already had 65 students take the course. These students represent a broader spectrum of the campus community, including student clubs, George Street Fitness Center employees, sororities, among others. Plans are underway to incorporate student-athletes.
Upon receiving constructive feedback about the course from students concerned about managing their emotions after supporting a struggling friend, OSWW introduced a “Taking Care of You” component to the online course.
Griffin Hogan, who serves as a veteran peer advisor, says the course helped him better support his fellow veteran students.
“This course helped me to really focus on subtle warning signs and to notice when a student or friend is having problems that they may not be comfortable opening up immediately about,” he explains. “I learned to pay attention to those things that may go unnoticed, while also learning to try to help without being overwhelmed.
“As students, we all reach points where we may struggle and not know how to express what we’re feeling,” adds the junior communication major. “It’s important to recognize, especially in my position as a veteran peer advisor, that it’s OK for students to be struggling. But it’s not okay for me to not try my best to help them express what they’re feeling and have productive conversations from that. This training helped me be better at my role.”
After students took the How to Help a Struggling Friend online class, the OSWW team noticed they would often approach them to collaborate and use OSWW programs for their club or organization. In addition, in the last two years, 85 students have taken the initiative to use the FAST form, a reporting tool to share concerns about a struggling student with Office of the Dean of Students. These students shared that that they knew about the form from the OSWW class.
In addition to a program for students, OSWW offers employees a course on How to Help a Struggling Student. For the first two academic years (2022 and 2023), 35 faculty and staff took the course. Given the success of its online class for students, in 2025, the team is using the Lynn Moody Fund to create an online class for employees, which will certainly increase the participation rate.
On top of classes, throughout the year OSWW conducts mental health surveys around campus. Based on how students score on questions around depression and anxiety, the OSWW team recommends options: from self-care to counseling. In the coming year, the team will be partnering with the Counseling Center to conduct a screening day, with the goal of reaching even more students.
OSWW has found social media to be a strong channel to reach students. In 2024 alone, its social media reach was 83,850, leading to approximately 2,000 unique visitors to the OSWW internal website.
In 2025, the OSWW will be training new members of its Students 4 Support team. Founded in 2007, S4S is a group of student volunteers who are taught emotional response techniques and are certified in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training so they can help their peers thrive academically and personally. Each year, S4S has more than 50 volunteers. Eight new members started this spring, and 12 more members will be trained over the summer.
“Through the program, I’ve learned that prevention isn’t just about offering solutions; it’s about creating a safe space where others feel heard and supported,” says Cameron Sumter, a junior majoring in business administration. “The skills I’ve acquired empower me to approach tough conversations with empathy, recognize signs of distress and guide friends toward the help they need before it’s too late.”
Adds sophomore psychology major Emma Steckly: “Taking How to Help a Struggling Friend during my freshman year helped me become a better peer, friend, S4S member and resident assistant, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time. This training taught me the many signs of people around me who may be struggling with their mental health and/or suicidal thoughts. It also taught me the appropriate ways to be a supportive presence capable of listening, caring and finding more helpful resources. As an RA, these skills helped me identify a resident who was struggling academically and socially, which allowed me to connect them with various resources in the residence hall and on campus!”
By creating a socially connected culture on campus where individuals have the skills and knowledge of how to support someone who is struggling with mental health, OSWW aims to improve the quality of life for students.
“We know our training works as we encourage rigorous evaluation of our programs to ensure we uphold the gold standard of evidence-based suicide prevention training,” says Rachael McNamara, director of the OSWW.
While OSWW has already made great strides with the support of the Lynn Moody Fund, more funds are needed to continue the momentum. OSWW wants to train more facilitators in Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training, which will strengthen participant skills to recognize the signs that a person is having thoughts of suicide and confidently intervene to help keep them safe.
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Health care costs in Massachusetts surged at “unsustainable” levels in 2023, adding more pressure to already-strained household budgets, according to new state data.
Total health care expenditures per capita grew to $11,153 from 2022 to 2023, an 8.6% leap that was the second-largest increase since officials began tracking the annual change a decade earlier, the Center for Health Information and Analysis reported Wednesday.
The 2023 rate was more than double the 3.6% “benchmark” that policymakers set as the goal for keeping health care cost growth within a reasonable range. That benchmark is up for debate at a hearing on Thursday.
“For 2023, we are seeing unsustainable cost growth trends persist, putting increasing pressure on residents, employers, and the system as a whole, emphasizing the urgent need for bold and systemic solutions,” said CHIA Executive Director Lauren Peters.
The growth rate in 2023 trailed only the 9% increase from 2020 to 2021, when health care spending rebounded after plummeting during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
From 2021 to 2022, total health care spending per capita grew 5.8%. At the time, that was the second-highest rate behind the pandemic-impacted outlier.
The sharp change will increase pressure on Beacon Hill to rein in health care costs, especially as affordability more broadly — from housing prices to energy bills — remains a central concern.
During a series of hearings about health care costs earlier this year, before CHIA published its 2023 data, officials warned about pocketbook impacts from rising health insurance costs.
Matthew Veno, executive director of Group Insurance Commission, which oversees insurance for 460,000 state employees and retirees, said the GIC has seen “pretty significant increases” in premiums in recent years.
“So when we are facing rising pressures on affordability, rising underlying costs of health care, that has a significant burden on the state budget,” he said. “And whenever we talk about health care, we should always talk in terms of tradeoffs. The dollars that we spend to provide essentially the same benefit going forward inhibits our ability to make progress in other areas, most notably health equity, behavioral health, but also to relieve the pressure as much as we can on our members who pay a significant portion of their premium, but also on the state budget.”
CHIA said pharmacy spending and new MassHealth supplemental payments to hospitals drove growth in 2023. Net of rebates, pharmacy spending increased $1 billion or 10% year over year, and MassHealth administered about $1.5 billion in new payments to hospitals designed to support quality and health equity efforts, the report said.
But the effects spilled down to individual patients, too. Between 2021 and 2023, premiums grew 12.1% and health insurance member cost-sharing grew 12.9%, both higher than the 9.7% statewide increase in wages and salaries over the same span, according to CHIA.
A bit more than two in five Massachusetts residents reported facing a health care affordability issue in the past 12 months, and the rate was even higher among certain demographic groups such as Hispanic residents (58.2%) and non-Hispanic Black residents (48.7%), CHIA said.
Hospital finances improved somewhat from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2023, the latest full budget cycle covered by CHIA’s new report, while remaining tight. Across the state, the median acute hospital operating margin grew from -1.3% in hospital fiscal 2022 to 0.2% in hospital fiscal 2023.
Just more than half of acute care hospitals reported positive operating margins in HFY 2023, CHIA said.
State analysts, watchdogs and lawmakers will discuss the new CHIA data at a hearing Thursday, where the Health Policy Commission and the Legislature’s Health Care Financing Committee will consider adjusting the cost growth benchmark moving forward.
In January, Veno said the GIC was “experiencing significant budget shortfalls” midway through fiscal 2025, and was more than $100 million over budget.
“This is the largest variance that we’ve seen in at least a decade, and this is consistent across all of our plans, and is driven primarily by rising provider prices and a couple of other topics,” he said. He added, “We don’t know where this is going to head. My concern is that it is a persistent and steady trend going forward.”
Under questioning from Insurance Commissioner Michael Caljouw, Veno later added, “We’re looking at a 10 and a half percent increase for fiscal ’26.”
Veno identified medical innovation, increased inpatient care utilization and drug prices, including a surge in weight loss drugs, as among the factors driving up prices. He cited a “steady trend” of 10% increases in pharmacy benefit costs, and projected a 14% increase in the “active spend” on pharmacy benefits at the GIC for fiscal 2026, which begins July 1.
Health care providers are demanding higher prices in negotiations with insurers, Veno said. He gave the example of a provider demanding a 50% increase in rates over three years. “It was a hard first position,” he said. “It was not simply expanding the field of negotiation. And what we’ve also seen is a willingness on the providers to terminate contracts if they don’t get the rate increases that they’re seeking.”
“I would say, over the last year, it’s been relatively non-stop that these rate negotiations have gotten extremely contentious,” Veno added. “We frequently see and hear about double digit increased demands from providers and a very aggressive posture.”
Caljouw, who has been hosting the health care cost sessions, said Massachusetts was at a “uniquely challenging moment.”
“It’s certainly a national issue in terms of scope, but the regional impacts and the impacts directly on individual purchasers, whether they’re businesses or individuals, is real and felt,” Caljouw said in January.

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TAMPA, Fla. — More than two out of five working-age adults report being charged for a health service that they thought was free or covered by insurance and fewer than half challenged those bills by contacting their provider or insurer.
It’s important for patients to know they can fight back and have a good shot at winning.
The Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in New York City, conducted the survey that led to this recent study on health insurance denials.
The Commonwealth Fund | Unforeseen Health Care Bills and Coverage Denials by Health Insurers in the U.S.
The ABC Action News I-Team spoke with Sara Collins, who heads the healthcare coverage and access program at The Commonwealth Fund.
“We conducted this survey, it was in 2023, and it sheds light on a very troubling reality, that many people with insurance are facing coverage denials for care that’s recommended by a doctor and many people are just simply at a loss about what to do about it,” Collins said.
Furthermore, about half of those who didn’t challenge their bill said they didn’t have the right to do so.
“That is really a troubling finding, people absolutely have the right to challenge their denials, they have a right to challenge denials even after a denial has been upheld by an insurance company. You can still go back and challenge it and appeal that decision again,” Collins told the I-Team.
She also said many people don’t know who to contact.
“There is a lot of confusion, clearly, about people’s understanding of their rights,” Collins said.
Some tips, if you get a denial:

“If you do challenge, you often do have success. So about half of adults who challenge coverage denials reported success in getting some or all of the denied services approved,” Collins said.
Another question the I-Team has received is, “At what point do I contact and attorney?” And, “Is it worth it?”
The I-Team asked that question to attorney Thomas LaGreca, who is the executive director of medical revenue recovery at Callagy Law in New Jersey.
“Most of our representation is the medical community against the insurance industry,” LaGreca said.
He told the I-Team that unless a lawyer takes on a case representing a patient in a pro bono capacity, they will be charged for billable time, which can add up fast.
“So if it takes six hours to draft a comprehensive complaint, to meet with the patient and all of that, it may be $400 an hour and it may be $2,500 that the patient is already not getting the care they need, needs to fork over to a lawyer to send some sort of demand letter to a carrier, and that may not even work. So it just adds insult to injury to the patient community,” LaGreca said.
LaGreca said he sees three big problems:

With the federal “No Surprises Act“, LaGreca said he would like to see the arbitration process expanded.
“That forum is set up for the narrow slice of ER treatment. For the most part. There’s other categories that come in there, but for the sake of simplicity, we talked about the emergency category. But there’s all sorts of care, primary care, that does not go into that process. So you could have primary surgeon denials and pre-service authorization denials go into that process,” LaGreca said. “Any medical dispute can go into this arbitration process. So, to me, that would solve 95% of the problems with the American healthcare industry. Because patients now will be happy, because they’re out of the dispute, they’re going to be treated as if it’s some in-network situation, the medical community has a convenient forum to resolve these, that doesn’t involve the patient, and the carriers lose their grip on medical treatment and it’s passed over to a set of presumably neutral, fair arbitrators.”
Collins told the I-Team that patients deserve better.
“They shouldn’t have to navigate a labyrinth to get the insurance coverage they pay for when it comes to critical recommended doctor care,” Collins said.

“I’m not a drag on the system.”
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A “red notebook manifesto.” A “9 mm black Ghost handgun.” A “Macbook Pro laptop.” And a “USB on necklace.”
The story of Luigi Mangione and the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been quiet in recent weeks, save for some quickly debunked news of “sex tapes” (“fake and not Luigi,” a defense lawyer has said) and the continual background whir of speculation on Reddit.
But behind the scenes, as the murder suspect waits in a Brooklyn jail for his next court date, in June, a battle is brewing over the evidence vouchered from his arrest.
Police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, spent 30 minutes questioning and searching Mangione in a local McDonald’s on a Monday morning three months ago before escorting him out in handcuffs. They later created an inventory listing 27 line items of property seized from his person, pockets, and backpack.
That 30-minute interaction inside the restaurant, preserved by the body-worn camera of at least one of 10 officers present, is now the subject of minute-by-minute scrutiny from his defense lawyers.
The lawyers are looking for procedural errors that could cause judges in Pennsylvania and New York to “suppress” everything Mangione had with him at the McDonald’s. Prosecutors could be barred from using any of the seized property as evidence at trial.
“We are concerned that Luigi’s constitutional rights were violated in Pennsylvania,” his lead attorney in New York, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, told reporters after Mangione’s most recent court date, on February 21 in federal court in Manhattan.
“And there are serious search and seizure issues that will be litigated in that case in Pennsylvania and in this case here,” she added.
Suppression may be a long shot.
Business Insider asked defense attorneys and former prosecutors to review a pretrial motion filed in Pennsylvania three weeks ago. Filed by the Altoona defense attorney Tom Dickey, it claims the 27 pieces of property in the police inventory were “obtained illegally and unlawfully.”
These legal experts said nothing seemed amiss in Dickey’s detailed account of how Altoona police surrounded, questioned, and arrested Mangione after a five-day multistate search.
“They’re unlikely to prevail, in my view,” said Gary Galperin, who was a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 42 years and now teaches classes on evidence and forensic psychiatry at the Cardozo School of Law.
“Everything they did was absolutely reasonable,” said the New York City defense attorney Ikiesha Al-Shabazz, a former narcotics prosecutor who teaches at the St. John’s University School of Law.
“Good luck with that,” she said of the suppression effort. “I don’t see that happening.”
Despite any long odds, challenging how the police approach, question, and arrest a suspect is a fundamental, Defense 101 obligation — every criminal lawyer worth her salt will make a thorough go of it.
“This is just standard — whether it’s going to work, they have to do it,” Al-Shabazz said. “It’s their job to make applications, and challenge the evidence, and ultimately put the prosecution to their burden.”
Suppression efforts are especially vital in a case like Mangione’s, where the stakes are sky-high.
In Pennsylvania, the 26-year-old Maryland native faces comparatively minor felonies of firearm possession and forgery stemming from the arrest itself.
His New York charges are far more serious. Manhattan’s state-level district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has charged Mangione with murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, which could lead to a life-without-parole sentence. In a separate federal case, the top murder charge is death penalty-eligible.
Another reason Mangione’s defense will fight a pitched suppression battle is the importance of what the software developer had with him when he was arrested.
Altoona police allege that as he sat in McDonald’s at 9 a.m. on that Monday — with one end of his paper COVID-19 mask lowered to allow a bite of hash brown — Mangione carried a black backpack that was a veritable “how to prosecute me” tool kit.
The defense filing, which describes and challenges the Altoona officers’ actions, says deep inside the bag was a 9 mm handgun with a metal barrel and a 3D printed lower receiver, the part that contains the trigger and pistol grip. There was a separate silencer, also 3D printed, police say.
NYPD officials say this hybrid, part metal, part plastic “ghost” gun is a ballistic match to the shell casings left on the sidewalk when Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota, was fatally shot as he walked to a UnitedHealthcare convention at a midtown Manhattan hotel.
The shells had the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” written on them, apparent references to what critics say are the delay tactics health insurance companies can use to stall paying claims.
The backpack also contained the red spiral notebook that Altoona police called a “manifesto” in their inventory — a word the Pennsylvania lawyer is now challenging.
The federal complaint against Mangione alleges the notebook’s handwritten pages “express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”
An entry dated six weeks before Thompson’s murder, the defense filing says, “describes an intent to ‘wack’ the CEO of one of the insurance companies at its investor conference.”
Given the death penalty stakes and the heft of the evidence, suppression is a chance worth taking, Michael Scotto, a defense attorney and former rackets bureau chief at the Manhattan DA’s office, said.
If a Pennsylvania judge finds the property seized from Mangione by Altoona police is inadmissible, that decision would be binding on the state judge in New York, he said.
Persuading a federal judge to suppress will be harder still.
“Federal law generally affords less rights to the suspect than state law,” Scotto said. “So if the search was proper under Pennsylvania law, that should basically be the end of it.”
The defense motion provides a down-to-the-minute script of Mangione’s last half hour of freedom that could have been ripped from a screenplay.
Mangione was sitting in a corner of the McDonald’s when the first two officers — each of them “uniformed, armed, and fully equipped” — entered and stood at his side, which resulted “in the formation of a human law enforcement wall,” Dickey’s filing says.
The police did not tell Mangione he was free to leave and gave a false reason for being there, saying he “looked suspicious” and had “over-stayed his welcome,” the document says.
He was told to show his ID and stand with his hands on his head, the filing says. He was then frisked, “although no circumstances existed at that time justifying said action,” it adds.
There was plenty of probable cause to detain and question Mangione at this point, legal experts told BI. Mangione’s face had been online and on TV for days.
“He’s like a rock star — everyone knows him,” Scotto said. “So if somebody spots the guy at McDonald’s, then the police are obviously going to come in and take defensive positions around him.”
Police are also within their rights to ask what are called “investigatory” questions — such as, “What is your name?” and, “Where are you from?” and, “What’s in the backpack?” — before Mirandizing a suspect.
The Pennsylvania defense filing describes a series of what are all permissible police actions, legal experts said — including any lies told about his overstaying his welcome.
“They’re not obligated to explain anything to him,” Al-Shabazz said. “They are allowed to lie.”
Two officers, the suppression motion says, continued to “interrogate and question” Mangione, asking whether a nearby backpack, plastic bag, and other items were his. One officer, the motion adds, left briefly to run his New Jersey ID, which police would later say was fake.
Some 17 minutes passed — and nearly a dozen officers were present — by the time Mangione was read his Miranda rights. He shook his head no when asked whether he wished to speak to the police, the defense filing says.
After more questioning and another pat-down, the document adds, “he was then placed in handcuffs and was informed that he was being detained” and was “physically removed from the McDonald’s.”
There was probable cause for this arrest, legal experts said: the Jersey ID that police said is fake.
The police who stayed behind then took a look through his belongings — what the filing alleges was an illegal search.
“During the search of the backpack, the Altoona Police uncovered a clip wrapped up in underwear and other items,” the filing says, referring to evidence later inventoried as a magazine holding 12 rounds, including three hollow-point rounds.
A computer chip was found wrapped in duct tape, which one officer removed using a knife, “without a valid search warrant,” the document adds.
Mangione’s bags were taken to the police department, where a search of the backpack revealed the gun, the “manifesto,” and everything else on the inventory, the filing says.
“They searched it as part of the arrest process, as part of securing his property — they don’t need a warrant for that,” Scotto said.
“And this wasn’t just picking him up for jaywalking. What if he had a bomb in that bag?” the former prosecutor added. “And you know, by the way, it’s not like they came at him with guns drawn.”
Dickey is also seeking to suppress everything Mangione told the police. A judge may disallow anything Mangione said in response to police questioning after he was Mirandized, Al-Shabazz said.
Dickey and Blair County, Pennsylvania, prosecutors did not respond to requests for comment. It’s unclear when a judge in Pennsylvania will rule; prosecutors would first need to file a response.
Friedman Agnifilo declined to say when she may file her own evidence-suppression motions in Mangione’s state and federal cases in New York.
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The state holds the key to providing relief to Florida families struggling with mismatched public health insurance and getting disabled or chronically ill children the coverage they need.
Whether or not it will use that key remains to be seen.
In 2023, Florida legislators unanimously passed a bill that would expand the eligibility of subsidized KidCare from 200% to 300% of the federal poverty level. It was supposed to go into effect at the start of 2024. It still hasn’t.
“I have people calling me every day, ‘I need health insurance for my kids,” said a frustrated Rep. Robin Bartelman during a House Health Care subcommittee meeting in February. The Democrat from South Florida sponsored the bill for KidCare expansion.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees the state’s children’s health insurance program (CHIP), has yet to enact the expansion due to an ongoing lawsuit the state filed against the federal government in January regarding newly finalized rules the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services established in November.
“In order to implement the expansion as passed, I believe, we need to let the litigation play out against the federal government,” said AHCA Medicaid deputy secretary Brian Meyer during a House Health Care subcommittee meeting in February.
Central Florida reached out to AHCA regarding the lawsuit and the delayed expansion, but it stated that it would not comment on open litigation. Court filings show the state has been reluctant to enact the expansion due to CMS’s newly finalized rules requiring states that rely on a premium system in their CHIP to provide 12 months of coverage to families that miss a monthly premium.
“Florida faces actual and imminent injury to its sovereign interest in implementing and enforcing its laws, and in the form of unrecoverable monetary loss,” according to the court filings.

Meanwhile, families waiting for the expansion are stuck in limbo with no definitive date established as to when relief may come.
“Just make it happen,” said Orlando resident Erin Booth.
Her 9-year-old son, Landon, is a cancer survivor, but he lost Medicaid coverage just as his recovery began. As a result, he receives coverage through the Florida Healthy Kids Corporation, but he’s not able to get the therapies he needs. Since last year, Booth has seen her son deteriorate in strength. Landon has osteoporosis and muscle atrophy as a side effect of chemotherapy. He’s also experiencing mild neurocognitive issues with his memory and attention. Landon used to really love playing soccer outside. These days he can’t put a seatbelt on by himself.
Regular visits to occupational, physical, and speech therapists could help with all of that. But his insurance only covered eight sessions of each. That was eight months ago.
Since then, Booth has been fighting an uphill battle trying to get Landon his therapies but feels as though the state is much like a wall on his road to recovery.
“I believe he would make bigger strides if he didn’t have his therapies taken away,” she said.
Last year, about 500,000 children saw their Medicaid coverage terminated as part of a national effort, known as the “Medicaid redetermination” period, in which states reviewed the income eligibility for Medicaid recipients.
Florida agencies did not track what happened to the vast majority of children who lost coverage, but Florida’s CHIP did see an increase at the time of redetermination of about 80,000. State data does not distinguish if those children joined CHIP after losing Medicaid coverage, or if they were new arrivals to the program from outside the state, or if it was due to a change in status.
What experts have been able to confirm is that during the redetermination period, thousands of disabled children who lost Medicaid or Children’s Medical Services (CMS) – a low-premium public insurance for children with special needs – were referred to a CHIP program known as the Florida Healthy Kids Corporation. The program’s statutes do not cover the expensive, habilitative services many of those kids need.

But that’s where HB 121 comes in. The bill expands Florida’s KidCare premium tiered program.
Currently, Florida KidCare has premiums of $15 to $20 for those with incomes between 134% and 200% of the federal poverty level, or FPL. Those over the threshold are on the “full pay plan” which isn’t subsidized and costs families about $250 a month.
The expansion would create a sliding scale of premiums that increases as families’ incomes grow, with premiums from $17 to $195 for those with wages between 200% and 300% of the FPL.
The newly proposed premiums are designed to increase as a family becomes more economically self-sufficient and prepare them for a transition to private insurance.
Currently, there is a gap in coverage for those whose income is over 200% of the federal poverty level. Current KidCare requirements provide subsidized public health insurance for those making an income within 200% of the FPL. HB 121 would increase the eligibility threshold from 200% to 300% above the FPL. The expansion would also serve families with disabled children as it would make the eligibility for Children’s Medical Services more accessible.

The idea behind the expansion was to not punish low-income families for increasing their wages, and provide an easier transition into the private health insurance market while avoiding the gap, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University.
The federal government’s 12-month coverage rule is also meant to help avoid gaps in coverage, Alker said.
“A lot of these families, can’t tough it out. I mean, they’ve got to have coverage. Even one week of lapse coverage is a crisis,” Alker said.
Jasmine Smith, of Leesburg, almost experienced a crisis earlier this month when her Florida Healthy Kids coverage for her 5-year-old child, Omari, became inactive.
Omari has a number of disabilities. He was born with a brain injury that left him with breathing and feeding problems. He also has spastic cerebral palsy. Omari received coverage through Children’s Medical Services until the start of this year after Smith was considered no longer eligible.
Smith was scared. Covering Omari’s needs is expensive. His 24-hour private duty nurse and feeding formula, alone, cost $20,000 a month, Smith said.
However, Smith was able to get Omari Florida Healthy Kids coverage in February for his many medical needs, but there was a problem.
Smith was late on her monthly payment.
“I guess I wasn’t understanding the payments, how they were set up,” Smith said. Believing she had to pay her $250 premium before Mar. 1 to receive coverage for March, Smith paid on Feb. 25. However, that’s a late payment. The premium for March was due Feb. 14.
The insurance became “inactive” which means Omari was still covered, but his coverage wouldn’t pay for any of his services. As a result of the late payment, Omari had no coverage for the first week of March. Smith was able to handle the one-week coverage lapse from financial assistance through the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, which covered Omari’s 24/7 private duty nurse, but it didn’t cover a lot of other things.
“Like tracheostomy supplies, gastrostomy feeding tube supplies, his therapies, doctors appointments, feeding formula,” Smith said. “It’s just very frustrating when he can’t receive that because of miscommunication on insurance.”

HB 121 bill was set to take effect at the start of 2024, but Florida filed a lawsuit against CMS after the federal agency published an FAQ in late 2023 that listed the requirement of 12-month coverage when a family misses a premium. A district court dismissed that case in May. Florida filed an appeal soon after but dropped it later in the year after CMS published finalized rules regarding the 12-month coverage. Then Florida refiled a lawsuit in January against the new finalized rules.
What Florida is doing isn’t just harmful to families in need of relief, but also illegal, Alker continued.
“The critical issue right now is that they are violating the law,” Alker said.
In January, Department of Health and Human Services administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure sent a letter to AHCA informing the agency that it had yet to demonstrate compliance with the new rules and was in fact terminating coverage of Floridians who were otherwise eligible for 12 months of coverage.
“States that are not in compliance with federal regulations are subject to further compliance action, including potential withholding of federal funds,” according to the letter.
Florida Healthy Kids, the most prominent public insurance entity under the Florida CHIP umbrella, operates in a cost-share system. The federal government pays for 70 cents of every dollar spent on healthcare. The remaining 30 cents is paid for through a combination of state funds and monthly premiums made by families.
Any funds withheld by CMS would hurt Florida greatly, said Lynn Hearn, the director of advocacy at the Florida Healthy Justice Project.
“We’re talking about the very significant contributions that the feds make to the CHIP program,” Hearn said. “It’s a very high match rate, and it would be a hit, a significant hit to Florida’s budget for that program.”
The 12-month eligibility stipulation was put in place to protect children from any sudden gaps in coverage.
“Continuous care is critical to a child’s success, especially the kids we’re talking about, with complex medical needs,” Hearn said. “Even if we’re talking about those with diabetes or asthma, if their family is in a car accident and they miss a month premium, those kids can’t miss a month, and you don’t want them to miss access to medicine.”
Yet, Florida remains steadfast in its argument against the stipulation.

Steve Freedman is the creator of Florida Healthy Kids. Currently, he’s a professor of public health policy at the University of South Florida and serves as an ad hoc member of the board of directors on Florida KidCare. He agrees with Florida’s position.
“The very DNA of Healthy Kids Corporation was family participation. So the whole idea of families saying they’re going to participate and then not participating is it’s fundamentally antithetical to why it was founded, to begin with,” Freedman said.
Alker disagrees with the state.
“It’s a pretty disingenuous argument,” she said.
Alker points to Florida’s 2024-2025 budget and the Florida KidCare predicted expenditures of $744 million. During a February budget agenda meeting, AHCA reported Florida KidCare had a projected overall surplus of $43 million.
During the February meeting, an AHCA budget analyst, Bobby Jernigan, was asked as to why such a large surplus from the fiscal year was left over.
According to AHCA, the discrepancy comes from enrollment estimation versus real-time enrollment. Estimating conferences take place multiple times a year to help AHCA realign its budget with its current enrollment list.
“We find that those estimates are slightly off either, environment or economic changes that take place will impact those enrollment numbers,” Jernigan said.
Part of the reason there was an overestimate was due to AHCA preparing for the KidCare expansion, but that wasn’t the main reason.
“It was more the redetermination process,” she said. “It was the expectation that as children became ineligible for Medicaid, they would roll on to CHIP. But instead, we had 500,000 children come off of Medicaid, and (80,000) go on to CHIP.”
In the state’s argument against CMS and the continuous coverage stipulation, AHCA reported in court filings it believed that the stipulation would cost the state $1 million a month to put in place.
Florida’s 2024-2025 fiscal budget is $118.6 billion. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year is $115 billion.
“When you have a budget like the size of the state of Florida’s and the federal government is paying the vast majority, that this loss of 0.01% of their budget is going to cause them not to be able to balance their budget, that just doesn’t make sense,” Alker said.
What also doesn’t make sense to those waiting on the expansion is why it is delayed.

Following the passing of HB 121 in 2023, AHCA submitted a waiver to CMS seeking the necessary federal funds that would enable the expansion. On Dec. 2, CMS approved the waiver with the expansion to be effective immediately. In its letter, CMS stated that Florida would need to respond with a plan to demonstrate its compliance with the continuous eligibility requirement. On Jan. 2, CMS sent another letter reminding AHCA that it had not submitted the letter of compliance and that if it did not do so, CMS would begin to withhold funds.
On Feb. 4, members of the Florida House of Representatives asked Brian Meyers, the AHCA Medicaid deputy secretary, if AHCA was aware of the Jan. 2 letter and if communications with AHCA had occurred.
“We have not responded to that communication yet but we do anticipate responding in the near future,” Meyers said.
At the time of the Jan. 2 CMS letter, the Biden Administration was still in power. It was thought that with the Trump administration, a friendlier ally to Florida leaders, communication between AHCA and CMS would begin, Hearn said, but that seemingly hasn’t happened either.
“The litigation that Florida has filed has had the result of stopping communications between Florida and CMS,” Hearn said. “The agency that it has sued presumably would have a friendlier reception under the current administration. It’s a little bit of a mystery as to why Florida would want to continue with this litigation.”
Scott Darius is the executive director of the Florida Voices for Health. The organization is an advocate for families who lost Medicaid. Darius said Voices for Health hears from frustrated families wondering why the state hasn’t enacted the expansion yet.
“I think they’ve kind of been holding it hostage,” Darius said. “So now you have a whole host of families who would otherwise qualify for this for Florida Kid Care under the 300% expansion, but, yeah, that option is not available to them until we take that step.”
Hearn pointed out that a reason for the ongoing litigation could be the national implications of a Florida victory. Should courts side with Florida regarding its stance on the 12-month eligibility protection, that would strike down the rule for all states that charge a monthly premium. According to KFF, 16 other states have monthly premiums.
“It appears that Florida won’t be satisfied with waiving the rule for its own purposes, and it’s trying to bring it down in totality,” Hearn said.
In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution targeting cuts to Medicaid, as much as $880 billion or more over a decade, according to KFF. Both House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump have expressed sentiments they don’t want to see Medicaid cut. But the hasty changes in Washington D.C do have experts like Hearn worried about what could happen to Florida’s CHIP.
“CHIP is one of the programs that the committee tasked with these cuts is responsible for overseeing it, and so CHIP is definitely vulnerable,” she said.
And while federal and state leaders figure out what happens next, families like Erin Booth and her son Landon are stuck waiting.
Booth is a generational Floridian. She was a believer in the DeSantis administration, too, but she can’t reconcile with everything that’s happened over the last year and the current state of CHIP in Florida.
“I never dreamed this would be happening. I always thought Florida was good for taking care of the people. But I guess not,” Booth said. “It’s not like these kids are asked to be disabled. They just want to be a kid. So why were you denying them the care to be a kid?”

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PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) – WV Navigator will be hosting a free event for those needing health insurance.
The event is a free, in-person health coverage enrollment event to assist with ACA Marketplace Health Insurance sign-ups. It will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Vienna Public Library. Representatives will be available for assistance during the entire event.
No appointment are necessary and walk-ins are welcome throughout the dy.
Jeremy Smith, Program Director for WV Navigator, emphasizes the importance of seeking guidance during the enrollment process.
“Many people feel overwhelmed by their options or don’t know how to shop for affordable health coverage,” Smith says. “Expanding outreach efforts has helped our program grow significantly—our enrollments have increased by over 114% compared to last year. More people are realizing that these are legitimate, affordable plans,” said Smith.
The Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Marketplace allows anyone who has recently lost health insurance coverage to sign up within 60 days of their loss.
Individuals not eligible for Medicare, Medicaid, or employer-based insurance may qualify to purchase coverage under ACA provisions. Medicaid enrollment is available year-round for those who meet eligibility requirements.
WV Navigator, a federally funded nonprofit, provides free assistance in selecting a plan and applying for financial aid that helps reduce monthly premiums.
Currently, 97% of Marketplace enrollees receive subsidies, making coverage more affordable. New subsidy rules have expanded eligibility, allowing even higher-income individuals to qualify for lower-cost plans. Four in five people can find plans for less than $10 per month.

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