Medicaid advocates are demanding the federal government to stop states from removing people from the program after 25 states and the District of Columbia dropped more than 1.5 million enrollees in less than three months.
The activists claim most of these are “procedural disenrollments” due to states’ failure to contact beneficiaries because of outdated contact information or because the enrollee did not complete a renewal due to poor state instructions.
Yet of those who’ve been “disenrolled,” most will lose Medicaid for a simple reason: They’re not eligible for it, and huge numbers are no longer even getting care via Medicaid — even as taxpayers send millions each month to HMOs, etc. to “cover” them.
The disenrollments are coming after the resumption of an eligibility redetermination process after a three-year pandemic pause.
States normally perform periodic redeterminations to account for changes in beneficiaries’ circumstances that could change their eligibility.
People die, move out of state, get a new job that provides health insurance or higher income that exceeds Medicaid thresholds.
Or they have changes in their family circumstances.
