Indianz.Com > News > Cronkite News: Millions of Americans lose Medicaid insurance due to ‘unwinding’
AHCCCS reaches out to recipients, community to help with Medicaid ‘unwinding’
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Cronkite News
PHOENIX, Arizona — For the past six months, the nation has been undergoing a Medicaid “unwinding,” wherein millions of individuals who were enrolled in Medicaid health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic are being disenrolled because their current income makes them ineligible.
States are now removing people from their enrollment systems because the enhanced federal funding that paid for expanding Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic, is ending.
The state agency that handles Medicaid payments to Arizona residents is the Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System (AHCCCS). On April 1, AHCCCS began the process of running all 2.5 million Arizonans enrolled on Medicaid through federal databases that verified a certain number of people were still eligible to stay on Medicaid automatically.
AHCCCS sent renewal forms to those who were not automatically eligible, to either check their information for errors or verify that they are, in fact, over the income limit.
Heidi Capriotti, communication administrator for AHCCCS, said they have been reevaluating and redetermining the eligibility of enrollees by looking at income and medical criteria, and reaching out to members for additional information if needed.
“As of September 8 of this year, we have initiated renewals for approximately 1.5 million people, and we have about 1 million people left to go,” Capriotti said.
Capriotti said the main cause for disenrollments is people not responding when additional information is needed.
So far, 32% of renewals have been approved and 11% have been discontinued. A third of those who have been disenrolled from Medicaid in Arizona are children.
“People need to respond,” Capriotti said. “We also encourage people to respond even if they think they are no longer eligible. Especially parents because children may be able to move to CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (KidsCare), even if parents don’t meet Medicaid eligibility criteria.”
In some states, children have been removed from Medicaid coverage because their parents exceeded the adult eligibility limit, even though the children still met the qualifying criteria.
Indianz.Com
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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