400 New Yorkers Lost Medicaid Coverage Due to Paperwork Problems

With pandemic benefits expiring, millions of Medicaid enrollees must prove they meet income thresholds or lose access to health insurance, recalls Times union.

Even though the State Department of Health informed the public that the pandemic-related pause in Medicaid eligibility verification had ended, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers lost their coverage simply because they were unable to complete the paperwork to re-enroll in the program. .

Nearly 800 New Yorkers (about 000% of those recently due to renew their coverage) were disenrolled from Medicaid within four months. Moreover, almost half of them lost access to the program due to problems with paperwork, and not because they lost the right to participate in the program.

About 1,7 million members of the state's Medicaid, Child Health Plus and Essential Plan programs have renewed their coverage since July, while 784 members have been disenrolled from those programs. Such data was collected by the non-profit organization KFF, which deals with health policy issues.

While 399 people do not meet income requirements, another 834 New Yorkers are excluded from Medicaid, Child Health Plus and Essential Plans for reasons related to paperwork.

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The exemptions began in July and are expected to last 14 months. Analysts say it is too early to tell whether the current pace of disenrollment will continue.

“There is still a lot of uncertainty, and there is a lot the state and federal government can do to change the situation,” said KFF senior policy analyst Bradley Corallo.

A monumental task

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left many unemployed, the state was forced to suspend Medicaid eligibility testing. During this time, Medicaid enrollment reached record levels and the number of uninsured fell sharply.

Automatic renewals for the program ended April 1 as the federal health emergency ended and the economy recovered. Now the State Department of Health Services faces the daunting task of verifying that the 9 million New Yorkers on Medicaid meet income requirements for the program.

Statistical modeling by the Urban Institute suggests that more than a million New Yorkers could lose access to Medicaid, and the number of uninsured people in the state could rise by 20%.

Advantages and disadvantages

The vast majority of subsidized insurance holders in New York who completed the renewal process were able to keep their health plans, switch to other state-funded plans, or purchase insurance through the New York State Marketplace. Only 1-2% of Child Health Plus, Essential Plan and Medicaid enrollees who were tested were found to be ineligible for these programs

A more alarming indicator is those who have lost their insurance. Many were kicked out of the program because they didn't fill out the renewal form, rather than for reasons related to not being eligible for insurance. New York's procedural exception rate is 49%, below the national average of 71%.

Advocates for children in New York say they are most concerned about the estimated 10 to 12 percent of children in New York whose parents or guardians have not filled out paperwork to renew their benefit plan.