20 MILLION Americans will lose their health insurance starting this WEEK as states begin phasing out pandemic protection for Medicaid
- As of February 2020, more than 20 million people have signed up for government health insurance
- About 15.5 million poor and disabled Americans are at risk of losing their health insurance
- Pandemic-era emergency rules kept people from getting kicked off Medicaid
About 20 million Americans are at risk of losing health care coverage this week as states begin phasing out pandemic-era protections for Medicaid beneficiaries.
The tapering started on April 1 and will continue for the next 14 months. Millions of men, women and children who received coverage during the pandemic are at risk of losing it.
Pandemic-era legislation guaranteed that enrollees in the government program would not be dropped from the rolls, even if they would otherwise be ineligible for reasons such as higher income, meaning they made too much money to qualify.
Over the course of three pandemic years, Medicaid and CHIP enrollments have soared to 90.9 million, an increase of nearly 20 million. Now that the pandemic has ebbed, millions of Americans are believed to have returned to work, increasing their income and making them ineligible for coverage.
About one in six of the 84 million Americans on Medicaid are at risk of losing their coverage in the next 14 months
Residents of Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, New Hampshire and South Dakota will be the first to feel the pain of repurposing.
Healthcare in America is notoriously expensive with an estimated 79 million Americans struggling with medical debt.
Despite this, several Republican congressmen are toying with the prospect of drastic cuts in government health care.
States will lift protection over the course of about 14 months. About one in six of the 84 million Americans on Medicaid are at risk of losing their coverage in the next 14 months.
Medicaid is the federal government’s health insurance program for the very poor and disabled.
It is jointly funded by federal and state governments, meaning the latter guarantees funds that match state spending on the program.
When it became clear to government officials in March 2020 that Covid outbreaks around the world foreshadowed a global pandemic that would put the US in a stranglehold, they reasoned that it would be a very bad time for Americans not to have access to healthcare.
On March 18, 2020, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act was signed.
This legislation provided incentives for states to enact a “continuous enrollment” guarantee that officials would not terminate enrollment for people deemed not “validly enrolled” or change eligibility groups while still receiving the enhanced increased federal matching funds. received.
A major reason someone is ineligible is that their income exceeds the threshold allowed for Medicaid coverage.
The program is designed for people who meet certain income guidelines, which are adjusted each year based on poverty rates.
In subsequent legislation, the federal government increased the amount it would make available to states that expanded access to Medicaid benefits to nearly all adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($20,120 for an individual in 2023), a offered by Obamacare. It was intended to discourage those states from dropping enrollees.
Medicaid provides people with the ability to access preventive health care, such as mammograms, immunizations, and screenings for common chronic and infectious diseases.
This allows the health care system to save money in the long run.
Losing health insurance can be devastating not only to a person’s health, but also to their financial well-being.
People can be dropped from Medicaid rolls for a variety of reasons, such as administrative and paperwork issues or income increases that caused them to earn too much money to qualify for benefits.