To Bryce Gowdy, with Love: Prioritizing Medicaid's 'EPSDT' Mandate for America's Most Vulnerable Youth

Victor M. Jones (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund), To Bryce Gowdy, with Love: Prioritizing Medicaid's 'EPSDT' Mandate for America's Most Vulnerable Youth, Southern U. L. Rev., Vol. 48 (2021):

This Article joins the limited chorus of children's Medicaid scholarship by advocating for the prioritizing of the EPSDT program. Part I introduces an intersectional approach to understanding children’s mental health, and the need for public, preventative health care to address their mental health problems. Part II provides a review of American social and health insurance programs for indigent populations, as historical context for the development of the EPSDT program. Part III provides a detailed analysis of the EPSDT program as a civil rights mandate and the loadstar for national preventative health policy, positing that the intent and aims of the EPSDT program are undermined by the program’s placement under the statutory scheme of its parent Medicaid program. Part IV discusses the historical and systemic struggles by states in implementing the EPSDT program and the source of these problems. Lastly, Part V proposes as a solution, a federalized EPSDT program, to ensure the program’s enforcement and fulfillment as a civil rights mandate for America’s most vulnerable youth. For children like Bryce.