Biden Administration Wants To Slow Down The Purge Of Medicaid To People

On Monday, the Biden administration wants the states to slow down their purge of Medicaid rolls, citing concerns that large numbers of lower-income people are losing healthcare benefits due to administrative grounds.

Biden Administration Urges States To Slow Down The Purge Of Medicaid To People (PHOTO: Commonwealth Care Alliance)

Medicaid Strict Measurements

The nation’s Medicaid rolls swelled during the coronavirus outbreak as states were prohibited from ending people’s coverage. But that came to a halt in April, and states now must re-evaluate recipients’ eligibility just as they had been regularly required to do before the pandemic.

AP News reported that Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said that in some states around half of those whose Medicaid renewal cases were selected in April or May have lost their coverage. The primary reason is what CMS describes as “procedural reasons,” such as the negligence to return forms.

Xavier Becerra the Secretary of Health and Human Services said in a letter that she was worried about the number of people unnecessarily losing coverage, especially those who seem to have lost coverage for avoidable reasons.

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The Biden Administration Urgest The States To Slow Down The Termination Of Medicaid

Biden Administration is encouraging state Medicaid agencies to delay procedural terminations for one month while conducting additional targeted outreach to Medicaid recipients instead of immediately dropping people who haven’t responded by a deadline.

Furthermore, they are also encouraging states to permit providers of managed healthcare plans to support people submitting Medicaid renewal forms.

Nobody “should be removed from coverage just because they changed addresses, didn’t obtain a form, or didn’t have sufficient information about the renewal process,” Becerra said in a statement.

States are moving at different paces to accomplish Medicaid eligibility determinations. Some haven’t dropped anyone from their registrations yet while others already have removed tens of thousands of people.

Healthcare advocates said it’s particularly concerning when states have huge numbers of people extracted from Medicaid for not responding to re-enrollment notices.

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