For three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, people did not have to go through any kind of renewal process to stay on Medicaid.
That changed in April, and now every state is winnowing its rolls — some much more quickly than others. Texas reported disenrolling 82% of its Medicaid recipients it had processed through May, while Wyoming shed just 8% of its rolls, according to an analysis by KFF, a health policy research organization.
At least 3.7 million people have lost Medicaid, including at least 500,784 Texans in just the first month, according to reports from 41 states and the District of Columbia that KFF analyzed. And 74% of people, on average, are losing coverage for “paperwork reasons,” says Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform at KFF. She described some of those reasons.
“They didn’t get the renewal notice in time. They didn’t understand what they needed to do,” says Tolbert. “Or they submitted the documents, but the state was unable to process those documents before their coverage was ended.”
Source: Texas Medicaid dropped more than 500,000 enrollees in one month / npr.org