Arkansas removed more than 72,000 people from Medicaid in April, the first month states can begin cutting program rolls. A spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Health Services wrote in an email that those affected by this who believe they are still eligible for coverage can provide the state with missing information to withhold or restore. recover subsidies.
In Florida, nearly 250,000 Medicaid enrollees lost coverage last month, more than 82.2% of them for procedural reasons. The Florida Health Care Administration did not respond to requests for interviews.
Indiana boasts the highest procedural rejection rate to date of 88.5%. A spokesperson for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration wrote in an email that the state’s Medicaid rolls have grown to 2.2 million during the pandemic. Some applicants may have failed to meet state requirements because they knew they were no longer eligible, the spokesperson wrote. In addition to mailing notices, text messages and phone calls to beneficiaries, the agency is conducting a paid advertising campaign, the spokesperson wrote.
States are investing in new technology systems, training armies of brokers, and partnering with health insurance companies and providers to reduce insurance losses.
Despite this effort, most Medicaid beneficiaries are unaware that states have continued to check eligibility, according to the results of a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released Wednesday. Sixty-five percent of respondents were unaware of the Medicaid redefining, and another 7%—mostly Black or Hispanic—falsely believed that states were not allowed to cut people off. programme. Nearly 30% said they didn’t know where to buy replacement insurance and 15% said they wouldn’t have it.
The CMS should require states to have a procedural level of denial, said Lucy Dagneau, senior director of state and local Medicaid campaigns at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. submit corrective action plans or suspend decisions. “What we worry about is that it doesn’t seem clear that states necessarily know why their procedural denial rates are so high,” she said.
Long wait times at call centers, mailing delays, and fraud reports further complicate the process for applicants.
For example, West Virginia is looking at other states’ Medicaid systems to see if their residents are covered elsewhere. Miriam Delaney Heard, senior attorney with the National Health Law Program, said if an enrollee has an open case in another state, West Virginia will remove them from Medicaid and start a fraud investigation. . To restore West Virginia’s Medicaid coverage, she said, beneficiaries must close their claims in other states and prove they have not committed fraud.
“They are asking someone to close a case in another state. How could that have happened?” Delaney Heard said. “You call into these call centers and can’t reach anyone and even so, no matter what state they’re from, they have to go through the verification process. How high will this be on their radar The West Virginia Department of Health Services did not respond to requests for interviews The state has not released updated enrollment data.
In South Dakota, more than 1,700 people lost their Medicaid coverage in April, who will be eligible when the state’s Medicaid expansion takes effect July 1. The South Dakota Department of Social Services declined to comment. .
North Carolina is also poised to expand Medicaid after the state enacts the policy in March. North Carolina will begin redefining in July, months before the expansion goes into effect, said North Carolina Medicaid Deputy Director Jay Ludlam. In the meantime, the state is planning to help people leaving Medicaid find alternative coverage and then enroll those eligible for expanded Medicaid when it becomes available, he said.
“They don’t have to fill out any paperwork. It will be seamless with them. Ludlam said they will be enrolled in the expanded population.
Spokesman Heidi Capriotti said Arizona Medicaid, known as the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, has unenrolled 33,705 people enrolled in Medicaid during the federal public health emergency, and 6,126 people enrolled in Medicaid prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arizona is continuously monitoring applicants’ information during the pandemic, she said, which allows the state to more easily assess which beneficiaries are more likely to no longer qualify. In addition, public employees do not need training or retraining to perform the reassignment, Capriotti said. “I would say the process is going as smoothly as expected,” she said.
