It was hard enough for Stephanie to get methadone treatment when she moved from Indiana to Florida last year. The nearest clinic, north of Tampa, was almost an hour away, and she needed help with transportation. But at least Stephanie didn't have to worry about affording it.
Medicaid in Florida covers methadone, which reduces her opioid cravings and prevents withdrawal symptoms. Stephanie had young children, and had trouble landing a job after the move. So even though Florida has strict eligibility rules for Medicaid, she qualified for coverage.
For nearly a decade, methadone has helped Stephanie juggle jobs and take care of her kids. Stephanie, 39, asked to be identified by her first name only, because her two youngest kids don't know she's in treatment for opioid addiction. But methadone lets her “just have a normal — really normal — life,” she said.
“You know, all the things that some people take for granted.” So it was devastating when Stephanie arrived last summer at her clinic in Inverness, Florida to pick up her weekly supply of doses, and learned she had been dropped from the state’s Medicaid rolls. Florida, like other states, was going through its data and checking the eligibility of each enrollee — part of a bureaucratic reset after the end of the pandemic.
Stephanie didn’t know why she was disqualified, but suddenly, her methadone prescription cost hundreds of dollars that she couldn’t afford. She panicked, afraid that a disruption in care would.