On June 30, 2023, the National Women’s Law Center submitted a comment in response to a proposed rule on access to Medicaid services.  

Medicaid programs offer critical services for enrollees, who are disproportionately women of color, disabled women, and women overall. But many enrollees face barriers to accessing needed care, and they have few opportunities to influence the development and implementation of Medicaid policies. Our comment offered a number of recommendations to improve access to Medicaid services and stakeholder engagement. For example, we urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to: 

  • Improve access to high-quality, person-centered home- and community-based services (HCBS), which are critical for the dignity and wellbeing of disabled and aging people 
  • Help improve job quality and wages for HCBS direct care workers, who are mostly women of color and disproportionately immigrant women, and whose crucial services are systematically undervalued and underpaid 
  • Strengthen Medicaid advisory committees to better empower beneficiaries and other stakeholders to influence Medicaid policy and hold Medicaid agencies accountable 

Our full comment can be found here.