20 million Americans are losing their health insurance starting this week as states begin to eliminate Medicaid pandemic protections
- More than 20 million people are registered with government health coverage since February 2020
- Approximately 15.5 million Americans who are poor and disabled will lose health insurance
- Pandemic-era emergency rules prevented people from being kicked off Medicaid
About 20 million Americans likely will lose Medicare coverage this week as states begin to loosen pandemic-era protections for Medicaid beneficiaries.
The program’s downsizing began on April 1 and will continue for the next 14 months. Millions of men, women and children who got coverage during the pandemic will lose it.
Covid-era legislation ensured that those enrolled in the government program would not be cleared even if they would have been deemed ineligible for reasons such as increased income, meaning they made too much money to qualify.
Over the course of three pandemic years, Medicaid and CHIP enrollment swelled to 90.9 million, an increase of nearly 20 million. With the pandemic subsiding, millions of Americans are believed to have returned to work, increasing their income and thus making them ineligible for coverage.
Nearly one in six of the 84 million Americans on Medicaid will lose their coverage over the next 14 months.
Over three pandemic years, Medicaid and CHIP enrollment swelled to 90.9 million, an increase of nearly 20 million
Residents of Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota will be the first to feel the pain of a re-decision.
Health care in America is very expensive with an estimated 79 million Americans in medical debt.
Despite this, many Republican congressmen are toying with the prospect of drastically cutting state healthcare funding.
States will remove protections over a period of about 14 months. Roughly one in six of the 84 million Americans on Medicaid will lose their coverage over the next 14 months.
Medicaid is the federal government’s health insurance program that serves the poor and disabled.
It is funded jointly by the federal and state governments, meaning that the latter guarantee funds to match state expenditures on the program.
When it became clear to government officials in March 2020 that the worldwide outbreak of Covid heralded a global pandemic that would put the United States in a stranglehold, they reasoned that it would be a very bad time for Americans who lacked access to health care.
On March 18, 2020, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act was signed into law.
This legislation provided incentives for states to establish a “continued enrollment” guarantee that officials would not terminate enrollment of people deemed not “properly enrolled” or change eligibility groups while still receiving enhanced federal matching funds.
The main reason someone is considered ineligible is because their income has increased beyond the limit for Medicaid coverage.
The program is for people who meet certain income guidelines, which are adjusted each year based on poverty levels.
In subsequent legislation, the federal government increased the amount of funding it would provide to states that expanded access to Medicaid benefits to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($20,120 per person in 2023), an offering from Obamacare. It was supposed to discourage those countries from dropping their enrollment.
Medicaid provides people with access to preventive health care services such as mammogram immunizations and screenings for common chronic and infectious diseases.
This allows the health care system to save money in the long run.
Losing health coverage can be devastating not only to a person’s health, but also to their financial well-being.
People can be dropped from Medicaid rolls for a variety of reasons, such as administrative issues, paperwork, or increases in income that mean they earned too much money to qualify for benefits.
