Texas is not meeting federal requirements to process applications for Medicaid health insurance and food benefits quickly, officials said in letters revealed Monday.
Why it matters: Texas has kicked more than a million people off Medicaid for procedural reasons in the last year, many of whom may still be eligible for coverage. Large backlogs can lead to longer waits for people to regain coverage and access health care.
- Also, delayed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits make it harder for families facing food insecurity to eat regular, healthy meals.
Threat level: If the state doesn’t turn its SNAP system around, Texas could lose millions in federal funding that supports food benefits.
State of play: States paused regular Medicaid eligibility checks during the pandemic, allowing people to keep coverage. They began rechecking in April 2023.
- Texas finished those checks two months ago, per the state’s latest report. But the state is still processing some cases.
- As of this April, about 2.1 million Texans had lost their Medicaid coverage
— nearly 1.4 million of them for procedural reasons like outdated information, not because they were ineligible, according to the report.
Source: Feds: Texas is too slow to process Medicaid, SNAP benefits / AXOIS SAn Antonio