The Great Unwinding: Medicaid for Low-Income People and People with Disabilities During the Great Depression (Extended Abstract)
It is possible that some people lose Medicaid coverage because they don’t qualify anymore, or that they may be able to find a new job that offers health insurance.
In Arkansas, for instance, advocates noticed a problem in the northwest corner of the state with a community of people who are from the Marshall Islands originally. The state had translated renewal documents, but the wrong message seemed to be getting through, says Keesa Smith, who now works at the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and formerly worked for the state’s Department of Human Services.
Smith says that the documents that DHS had translated into Marshallese were very aggressive. The only thing that was translated was that these people did something very wrong.
Medicaid is jointly funded by states and the federal government, and each state manages its own program. That’s what accounts for the wide variation in how states are handling what has been called the Great Unwinding.
Medicaid grew much more rapidly during the pandemic. Just a few months ago — in March — the number of people on Medicaid was 93 million. Medicaid is a government health program for low-income people and people with disabilities.
The state had no Medicaid renewal last minute, but its Medicaid recipients were enrolling late in April, 2009, and now every state is winnowing its rolls
They didn’t get the renewal notice in time. They didn’t understand what they needed to do,” says Tolbert. “Or they submitted the documents, but the state was unable to process those documents before their coverage was ended.”
In April, that changed, and now every state is winnowing its rolls. The analysis by KFF said that Texas disenrolled most of its Medicaid recipients through May while Wyoming shed 8% of its rolls.