Florida KidCare

Last of a four-part series: Legislators passed a public health insurance expansion that would help poor and disabled children get better coverage over a year ago, but the funds remain unused.

Part 3 of a series: Kicked off of Medicaid, Florida children with medically complex needs are offered a state insurance program designed for healthy kids who cannot provide the care they require.

Part 2 in a series: After thousands of families lost Medicaid, many enrolled their children with complex needs in Florida Healthy Kids, a state insurance plan that wasn’t meant to cover their special care.

The dispute centers on part of the rule preventing states from cutting off coverage for nonpayment of premiums after children have been found eligible for the children's health insurance program.

Florida KidCare, a childhood insurance option for some parents who lost coverage, is failing to offset the coverage gap left by the Medicaid unwinding.

Both states want to expand eligibility for the CHIP, but their approaches to charging low-income families premiums for the coverage showcase the nation’s ideological divide on helping the disadvantaged.

U.S. Judge William Jung rules federal law requires the state to go through an administrative process to challenge the guidelines. After that process, the state could take the issue to a federal appeals court.

A filing in federal court in Tampa by the Justice Department is the latest move in a battle over guidelines issued for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which operates in Florida as KidCare.

In response to the report, a DCF official says the state's outreach strategy went "above and beyond" federal requirements and "any notion that Florida has failed in this process is false."

It's been nearly a year since Florida began reviewing Medicaid eligibility, and since then nearly a half-million children have lost insurance. Many of them have fallen into a gap without coverage.