By Erin Delaney
Health insurance coverage in America is undergoing one of the largest upheavals in recent memory as millions of adults and kids are being reconsidered for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage.
During the pandemic, more than 20 million people were able to gain coverage from the pandemic-era funding provided by Congress to states to ensure people had coverage during a once-in-a-millennium global pandemic. It provided a safety net for Americans when they were faced with terrifying uncertainty about their health and the health of their families.
On April 1, four months after the federal COVID-19 public health emergency declaration ended, states resumed their Medicaid and CHIP redetermination process. Since then, troubling data has been emerging from states about what is happening to the 93 million Americans — nearly 1-in-4 people — who were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP coverage.
We’ve hit a new alarming coverage milestone, seven months into the redetermination process. As of Nov. 21, at least 10,868,000 Medicaid enrollees have been disenrolled based on the data from 50 states and the District of Columbia. Millions more are expected to lose coverage in the coming months. Worse, in the 20 states that report age breakouts, children account for about 4-in-10 of these Medicaid disenrollments.
This story was originally published in The Messenger on December 12, 2023.
