Half a million children and families regain Medicaid coverage
Source: CNN Politics
Published 2:34 PM EDT, Thu September 21, 2023
CNN — Some 500,000 children and families have had their Medicaid coverage reinstated after many states improperly terminated their enrollment because of a systems issue, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday.
At issue is the states’ use of existing data to automatically determine the eligibility of certain Medicaid recipients as they review all their enrollees’ qualifications after a three-year Covid-19 pandemic pause. Some states were considering entire families as a whole without taking into account that the household income thresholds for children are higher.
Late last month, the agency told every state and territory to check their systems and make sure that they were evaluating each member of the household individually. Some 29 states and the District of Columbia so far responded that they had this issue and were required to pause disenrolling residents in this situation and restore the coverage of those already affected.
“By making sure the systems glitch is fixed in states across the country, we will help stop more families and children from becoming disenrolled simply because of red tape,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. “This will help strengthen access to Medicaid, not just during this very challenging renewal transition, but also in the long term.” CMS did not have a breakdown of how many children were among the 500,000 people who regained their coverage, but said it was “a significant number.”
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/21/politics/medicaid-children-families-coverage/index.html
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