1.5M Dropped from Medicaid Rolls Since April

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Facts

  • About 1.5M people have reportedly been dropped from Medicaid rolls in more than two dozen states since April and the winding down of the COVID pandemic.1
  • The federal government requires states to review the eligibility of its Medicaid recipients. Florida has dropped the most people with its total including several hundred thousand.1
  • Several states have dropped half or more of their recipients, including Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia.1
  • Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, reached 95M enrollment during the pandemic, as the government mandated states couldn’t drop people, and people didn’t have to reapply.2
  • Those protections are ending and many people are losing coverage over paperwork issues, and often finding out they’re no longer covered when they seek or receive service from a medical professional or pharmacy.2
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently held a press conference to urge states to slow down their disenrollments, and to warn that it could pause disenrollments if it feels states are going too fast.3

Sources: 1Associated Press, 2NPR Online News, and 3POLITICO.

Narratives

  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Daily Kos. Republican governors are rushing to force people off their Medicaid rolls – sometimes for clerical reasons – to burnish their right-wing reputations for the national stage. They care more about politics than the people in their own state, and it’ll be a sad state of affairs if any of them are able to earn election to higher office.
  • Republican narrative, as provided by Daily Caller. Biden is the one failing these people. Let’s not forget that the COVID-era rule protecting these Medicaid recipients was issued during the Trump administration. In many cases, Republicans and Democrats are removing people from the roles to adhere to state law since the rule ended. Instead of playing politics, the current administration should act if it thinks something wrong is taking place.