On August 30, 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands requiring them to determine whether they have an eligibility systems issue that could cause people, especially children, to be disenrolled from Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) even if they are still eligible for coverage, and requiring them to immediately act to correct the problem and reinstate coverage. The letter notes that in the wake of the end of COVID-19 pandemic protections, states may be unnecessarily disenrolling children from Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program because they are reviewing families as a whole despite there being a higher threshold to remove children from the programs, though the letter did not say how many children may be affected.
States have disenrolled more than 5.5 million people since the pandemic freeze on Medicaid disenrollments ended this spring, but data on how many children are losing medical insurance is harder to come by, according to this Stat article. “Only 15 states have reported disenrollments by age, and between them nearly 1.5 million children have been removed.”
