Almost 25 million Americans have now been removed from Medicaid coverage as the benefits provided during the COVID-19 pandemic are being withdrawn by their home states.
Health policy organization KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, has been monitoring the data with a tracker since May 3. The most recent update shows that, as of August 1, nearly 25 million people (26 percent of previous Medicaid users) have now been “disenrolled” from Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Medicaid recipients had been given health care with “continuous coverage” during the pandemic as the global health crisis took hold. That decision was taken to ensure no one was dropped from the government health plan due to application requirements or procedural problems. But since March 2023, states have been “unwinding” beneficiaries from their continuous coverage, and millions have had their Medicaid health care benefits removed because they do not meet the qualification criteria or because they missed application deadlines.
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In May, more than 340,000 Americans lost access to Medicaid, but that figure has now skyrocketed in just a few months on. In July, some 370,000 people were removed from the plan in just one state alone, when Alabama ended coverage for hundreds of thousands of residents.
According to the KFF this month, at least 24.8 million Americans in total have now been dropped from Medicaid, based on the states that reported Medicaid discontinuation numbers. Not all states released the information, meaning the true figure could be higher.
There had been 94 million people enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP as of March 2023; which means the disenrollment figures mean 26 percent of those are now not covered by the program.
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Some 54.3 million people (58 percent) did move forward with renewed coverage, but 15 million people (16 percent of Medicaid users) still have have not renewed their coverage, according to KFF figures.
KFF figures shows that across all states with available data, 69 percent of people who lost their coverage lost it for procedural reasons. That might mean “cases where people are disenrolled because they did not complete the renewal process and can occur when the state has outdated contact information or because the enrollee does not understand or otherwise does not complete renewal packets within a specific timeframe,” the KFF said.
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The organization added: “High procedural disenrollment rates are concerning because many people who are disenrolled for these paperwork reasons may still be eligible for Medicaid coverage.”
Smile Insurance Group CEO Chris Fong previously told Newsweek that patients “usually only find out that they have lost Medicaid when they try going to the doctor and they are told they have no insurance. The best advice we can give is if someone finds themselves in the position where they have lost Medicaid is to immediately contact their state Medicaid agency, find out the reasons for the loss, and reapply if they still qualify.”
