(Kaiser Health News) The Biden administration and state officials are bracing for a great unwinding: millions of people losing their Medicaid benefits when the pandemic health emergency ends. Some might sign up for different insurance. Many others are bound to get lost in the transition.
State Medicaid agencies for months have been preparing for the end of a federal mandate that anyone enrolled in Medicaid cannot lose coverage during the pandemic.
Before the public health crisis, states regularly reviewed whether people still qualified for the safety-net program, based on their income or perhaps their age or disability status.
While those routines have been suspended for the past two years, enrollment climbed to record highs. As of July, 76.7 million people, or nearly 1 in 4 Americans, were enrolled, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
When the public health emergency ends, state Medicaid officials face a huge job of reevaluating each person’s eligibility and connecting with people whose jobs, income, and housing might have been upended in the pandemic.
People could lose their coverage if they earn too much or don’t provide the information their state needs to verify their income or residency.
Medicaid provides coverage to a vast population, including seniors, the disabled, pregnant women, children, and adults who are not disabled. However, income limits vary by state and eligibility group.
For example, in 2021 a single adult without children in Virginia, a state that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, had to earn less than $1,482 a month to qualify. In Texas, which has not expanded its program, adults without children don’t qualify for Medicaid.
State Medicaid agencies often send renewal documents by mail, and in the best of times letters go unreturned or end up at the wrong address. As this tsunami of work approaches, many state and local offices are short-staffed.
The Biden administration is giving states a year to go through the process, but officials say financial pressures will push them to go faster. Congress gave states billions of dollars to support the coverage requirement. But the money will dry up soon after the end of the public emergency — and much faster than officials can review the eligibility of millions of people, state Medicaid officials say.
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Some people argue the current protections have been in place long enough.
“There’s no end in sight. For two years, it’s still a quote-unquote ‘emergency,’” said Stewart Whitson, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Government Accountability. The conservative think tank has argued that states can legally begin trimming people from Medicaid rolls without jeopardizing their funding.
“This is the kind of problem that just grows worse every day,” he said of not removing ineligible people. “At the beginning of the pandemic, people were in a different position than they are now. And so responsible legislators and government officials in each state have to look at the facts as they are now.”
Tsai said “it’s quite clear to us” that for states to be eligible for the covid relief bill’s enhanced Medicaid funding, they must keep people enrolled through the emergency. “Those two things are interlinked,” he said.
Meanwhile, states still have no idea when the renewal process will begin. HHS has said that it would give states 60 days’ notice before ending the emergency period. The additional Medicaid funds would last until the end of the quarter when the emergency expires — if it ended in April, for example, the money would last until June 30.
“It’s hard to do a communication plan when you say, ‘You’ve got 60 days, here you go,’” Nelson of Utah’s Department of Health said.
Colorado officials had debated sending letters to enrollees when the public health emergency was nearing its scheduled end on Jan. 16 but held off, expecting that it would be extended. HHS announced a 90-day extension only two days before it was set to expire.
“Those kinds of things are really confusing to members,” Medicaid Director Tracy Johnson said. “OK, your coverage is going to end. Oh, just kidding. No, it’s not.”
