April 5, 2024
The Medicaid Unwinding edition. One year ago this week, states were required to begin a process known as “Medicaid unwinding” -- determining who on their Medicaid rolls was eligible to remain on Medicaid and who was not. During the pandemic, Congress told states not to do the usual periodic determinations of eligibility, so that people would remain eligible for health care if they contracted COVID-19. But as part of a spending bill passed in December 2022, states were required to resume their eligibility checks.
As of the end of March, there were nearly 12 million fewer people on Medicaid, compared to a year before, of whom nearly 5 million were children. While some of those who lost Medicaid were found to be ineligible, fully 70 percent were dropped for not responding to requests for information, according to a recent report CHN co-released with other organizations including Unidos US, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, National Urban League, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Many of these people may still have been eligible, but never received or successfully navigated the paperwork requirements. The big takeaway from the stats below? States varied widely in the percentage of terminations. If they used procedures encouraged by the Biden-Harris Administration to make renewals easier, fewer people were dropped.
And things could get worse. A House Republican budget proposal seeks, over the long haul, to cut the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and CHIP by $4.5 trillion, turn Medicaid into block grants, slashing federal funding to states to run their Medicaid programs, and threatening a huge range of Medicaid-provided services, including home- and community-based care for the aging and people with disabilities.
We won't let them.
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