Rolling Medicaid Purge

July 24, 2024 | admin

COMMON DREAMS, Jake Johnson, September 9, 2023

Largest Concentration of Health Insurance Loss in US History

States across the U.S. have stripped nearly 6 million people of Medicaid coverage over just the past several months, creating what one healthcare activist and researcher described as “the largest concentration of health insurance loss in American history.”

“This is happening in red states like Texas, Utah, or Idaho, where we expect this brutal Medicaid retrenchment,” Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-author of ” Health Communism” and co-host of the popular “Death Panel” podcast, said in a statement on Friday.

“But there are huge amounts of procedural disenrollments happening in California. It’s happening in Rhode Island and California and New Mexico,” noted Adler-Bolton. “This is a year-long process, and it’s just getting started. It’s moving slowly, and it’s more dangerous this way. This process is rolling, so the data is slow. We’re not going to have a full picture of how to compare states against each other for months and months.”

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The latest data compiled by KFF—which includes publicly reported figures from 48 states and Washington, D.C.—shows that at least 5.7 million people have lost Medicaid coverage since April, when states began eligibility checks and disenrollments that were paused during the coronavirus pandemic.

A bipartisan deal reached by Congress and approved by President Joe Biden late last year lifted the pandemic-era continuous coverage requirements that prevented states from kicking people off Medicaid during the public health emergency. The policy led to record Medicaid enrollment, and its termination could cause upwards of 15 million people—including millions of children—to lose coverage under the program.

According to KFF, 73% of the people disenrolled from Medicaid so far have lost coverage for procedural reasons—such as a failure to return paperwork on time or jump through other, often confusing, bureaucratic hoops—not because they were deemed ineligible due to their income or other factors.

“High procedural disenrollment rates are concerning because many people who are disenrolled for these paperwork reasons may still be eligible for Medicaid coverage,” KFF explained earlier this week. “Some states, such as Maine, have temporarily paused procedural terminations for some enrollees while the states address problems in the renewal process that lead to increased procedural disenrollments.”

“Many of these individuals did not receive any notice of denial, leaving them unaware of their coverage termination.”

Texas has removed more people from Medicaid than any other state, disenrolling around 617,000 in just a few months.

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