More than 1 million people were dropped from Medicaid in the past couple of months as some states moved swiftly to halt health care coverage following the end of the coronavirus pandemic. Most were dropped for not filling out paperwork. Though the eligibility review is required by the federal government, President’s Biden’s administration isn’t too pleased at how efficiently some other states are accomplishing the task, the AP reports. "Pushing through things and rushing it will lead to eligible people—kids and families—losing coverage for some period of time," Daniel Tsai, a top federal Medicaid official, recently told reporters.
Already, about 1.5 million people have been removed from Medicaid in more than two dozen states that started the process in April or May, according to publicly available reports and data obtained by the AP. Florida has dropped several hundred thousand people, by far the most among states. The drop rate also has been particularly high in other states. For people whose cases were decided in May, around half or more got dropped in Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia. By its own count, Arkansas has dropped more than 140,000 people from Medicaid.
More than 93 million people nationwide were enrolled in Medicaid as of the most recent available data in February—up nearly one-third from the pre-pandemic total in January 2020. The rolls swelled because federal law prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid during the health emergency in exchange for providing states with increased funding. Now that eligibility reviews have resumed , states have begun plowing through a backlog of cases to determine whether people's income or life circumstances have changed. States have a year to complete the process. But tracking down responses from everyone has proved difficult, because some people have moved, changed contact information, or disregarded mailings about the renewal process.
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Advocates fear that many households losing coverage may include children who are actually still eligible, because Medicaid covers children at higher income levels than their parents or guardians. A report last year by the US Department of Health and Human Services forecast that children would be disproportionately impacted, with more than half of those disenrolled still actually eligible.
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