[NYAPRS Enews] States to Decide the Fate of Millions of Medicaid Recipients

[Harvey Rosenthal]

States to Decide the Fate of Millions of Medicaid Recipients
Megan Messerly Politico February 1, 2023

As of today, states can start reevaluating whether the millions of Americans who have remained covered by Medicaid during the pandemic are still eligible for those health insurance benefits,

How we got here: Since March 2020, the so-called continuous coverage requirement has caused Medicaid rolls to swell as states agreed not to remove anyone from the program during the pandemic in exchange for extra federal dollars.

But in December, the requirement was uncoupled from the federal public health emergency. Congress selected an end date for the requirement, setting states' redetermination work in motion. States can officially start kicking people off their Medicaid rolls on April 1.

State split screen: Some GOP-led states are more than ready to pare down the program. In December, 25 Republican governors, in a letter to President Joe Biden, said the continuous coverage requirement left them paying "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to cover people who now have other health insurance coverage and no longer need Medicaid.

In Arkansas, for instance, the Department of Human Services is beginning to send renewal letters to Medicaid recipients this month. The roughly 130,000 people who are part of the Medicaid expansion population in the state will be the first to have their eligibility in the program redetermined, with all redeterminations required to be completed within six months under a law passed by state lawmakers in 2021.

"The program was originally designed for the aged, blind, disabled and children, and that's who we are working to protect," Arkansas Department of Human Services spokesperson Gavin Lesnick told POLITICO. "The number one goal is to protect taxpayers."

Other states - especially blue states - plan to take their time. Illinois won't start initiating renewals until April 1, and even then, those who are part of that early group of redeterminations won't lose coverage until July 1 at the earliest. Colorado will start sending renewal packets in mid-March to people whose renewal date is in May. And in Washington state, the earliest date ineligible people could lose their coverage is April 30.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kilakwa.net/pipermail/nyaprs_kilakwa.net/attachments/20230201/b721b757/attachment.html>