At least 812,000 Texas children have lost health care coverage in the last seven months following the end of pandemic-era continuous Medicaid renewals, according to the latest data from KFF.
Children are 58 percent of the 1.4 million Texans who have been dropped from the federal health insurance program. The state has both the highest number of people booted off Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the largest percentage of those disenrolled who are children among states that differentiate enrollment data by age.
Texas’ disenrollment numbers have already surpassed the 1.3 million-person total researchers originally estimated could lose coverage as eligibility for the insurance program was recalibrated. The state already has the highest uninsurance rate in the country.
“We knew we were going to have problems, to be candid. I’m sorry we’re seeing the kind of numbers that we’re seeing,” said Steve Love, president and CEO of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council. “This is going to really exacerbate the problems we already have with the uninsured in Texas.”
Nearly 70 percent of people kicked off Medicaid in Texas lost coverage for procedural reasons like failing to return renewal packet requests from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Texas falls closer to the middle of the pack for procedural disenrollments, which ranges from 96 percent of people removed from Medicaid rolls in New Mexico to only 7 percent of those kicked off the insurance in Oregon.
Source: Texas Drops More Than 810,000 Children from Its Medicaid Rolls / Governing.com