Maya Gobara gave birth to her twin boys only 25 weeks into her pregnancy and said having Medicaid saved her family’s life. But the next time she went to the hospital, she was told she no longer had coverage.

Now, one of her 10-monthold sons is home, having been cleared to leave the hospital the day after Thanksgiving. The other is still in a neonatal intensive care unit.

Her children still have Medicaid coverage, which is guaranteed up to age 1 for babies whose births were covered by Medicaid, but Gobara is uninsured.

“My sons have been through meningitis, they have gone through hydrocephalus, two brain surgeries, tubes, trachs, and so I have a long run ahead of me, and even with all of that, Medicaid has made it possible,” Gobara said to a crowd of about 30 people at the Arkansas Education Association building in Little Rock on Thursday.

“I am thankful for Medicaid doing everything that it can for my babies,” she said. “I would like to be here to be able to take care of them, to be here to advocate for them, and the only way that I can really do that in a healthy state is if I had insurance, and right now I just don’t.”

For the past year, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families has been collecting stories of how Medicaid has affected people’s lives, said Hayley Cormican, a health policy associate for the organization.

Some of those stories were shared by speakers at the Medicaid town hall, hosted by Arkansas Advocates and Arkansas Community Organizations, on Thursday, and at an event in August meant to highlight the importance of Medicaid for workers ahead of Labor Day.

Arkansas Advocates also plans to feature such stories in a series of “Medicaid Minute” videos it plans to begin releasing soon, Cormican said.

“It’s basically like shortform videos of storytellers in Arkansas communities giving their one or two minute summary of their life experiences,” she said.

“We’re going to use it on our social media to share how the program impacts people and what difference it makes in people’s lives.”

On its website, Arkansas Advocates connects Gobara’s story to Arkansas’ status as the only state that has not taken steps to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage beyond the 60 days required under federal law.

The issue is expected to be a topic in the legislative session that starts Jan. 13.

State Reps. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, and Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, both filed bills on Nov. 20, the first day lawmakers could file bills ahead of the session, to extend the coverage period to a full year, as allowed under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Extending the coverage has been cited as a way to reduce the state’s maternal mortality rate. At 38.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2018 to 2022, Arkansas’ rate was the fourth-highest, behind Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, among states for which a rate could be reliably calculated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said postpartum women in Arkansas already have other coverage options through Medicaid or private health insurance and that the state just needs to do a better job of switching them to other forms of coverage when their pregnancy Medicaid coverage ends.

Legislators during the session will also need to approve the appropriation bill for the Medicaid program, a task that has been contentious in past sessions because of the three-fourths majority required and the opposition of some Republicans to the expansion of the program first approved by the Legislature in 2013.

Authorized under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the expansion extended coverage to adults with incomes of up to 138% of the poverty level — $20,782 for an individual or $43,056 for a family of four under the 2024 federal poverty guidelines.

“The reason for the town hall is that we want people to be engaged in the conversation around Medicaid and also for people to understand the importance of the program,” Cormican said.

“We wanted to build up those conversations as we get closer to the session and prepare for what might come up during the session.”

The Medicaid program was covering 866,481 people as of Oct. 1, including 416,793 children. The total also included 225,698 adults enrolled in receiving coverage through the expanded part of the Mediciad program known ARHOME.

ARHOME stands for Arkansas Health and Opportunity for Me.

Speaking at the town hall on Thursday, Camille Richoux, health policy director for Arkansas Advocates, said that ahead of the holidays, she wanted Medicaid supporters to “recenter and remind ourselves what we’re fighting for.”

“Next year, we all know that there’s going to be a lot of things happening from every direction,” she said.

Concerns about potential changes to Medicaid have been growing, she said.

“There are some bad ideas coming around about how to fix Medicaid, how to cut Medicaid, how to make it better,” Richoux said.

“Let me be clear, a lot of those ideas are just about cutting people’s care. They’re about making it harder and about giving it to fewer people.”

Another speaker, Anita Boone, accused the state Department of Human Services of intentionally making it difficult for people to remain on Medicaid.

“What I’m seeing is, there’s a river, and the tides get heavy, and we’re all in there,” Boone said.

“So somebody threw us a lifeline, but if you miss that lifeline and don’t catch it when DHS says catch it, you’re back in the water again.”

Boone said she was one of the thousands of people who suddenly had their Medicaid coverage cut off last year over paperwork issues.

“There needs to be some changes in Medicaid but DHS also,” Boone said.

Cormican said Arkansas Advocates doesn’t have have plans to regularly host similar town halls in the future, but it will hold advocacy training classes in the new year.

“We are going to help people take those lived experiences and turn them into advocacy and teach how they can advocate for things they care about,” she said.