Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their Medicaid coverage since pandemic protections expired

As states begin removing people from their Medicaid programs, early data shows many beneficiaries are losing coverage for procedural reasons.< /p>

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost their Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of an era policy. pandemic that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when recipients of Medicaid did not return documents to verify eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations for procedural reasons suggests that many people may lose their coverage even if they are still eligible. Many of those left behind were children.

From the start of the pandemic until this spring, states were not allowed to deport people from Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. Ensuring continued coverage has spared people regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and boosted enrollment to Medicaid at record highs.

But the policy expired at the end of March, triggering a massive bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punitive toll the so-called denouement is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. p>

So far, at least 19 states have started removing people from the lists. A precise total of the number of people who lost coverage is not yet known.

In Arkansas, more than 1.1 million people - more than one-third of state residents - were on Medicaid at the end of March. In April, the first month that states were able to begin removing people from the program, approximately 73,000 people lost coverage, including approximately 27,000 children 17 and under.

Among those left behind was Melissa Buford, a diabetic with high blood pressure who earns about $35,000 a year at an eastern Arkansas health clinic, helping families find insurance affordable disease. Her two adult sons also lost their coverage.

Like more than 5,000 others in the state, Ms. Buford, 51, was no longer eligible for Medicaid because that his income had dwindled up. A notice she received saying she didn't qualify upset her so much she threw it in the trash.

But the majority of those who lost coverage in Arkansas were dropped for procedural reasons.

Daniel Tsai, a senior Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official who helps overseeing the Biden administration's unwinding process, said more outreach was needed to help those who lost coverage this way. He said federal officials were in regular contact with state officials across the country to review early data on the course and verify whether people who lost coverage had a chance to prove their eligibility.

Governor. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, a Republican, defined unwinding as a necessary process that will save money and allow Medicaid to operate as intended.

"We are simply removing ineligible participants from the program to reserve resources for those who need them and uphold the law," Sanders wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this month. She added that "some Democrats and activist journalists oppose Arkansas' actions because they want...