A reminder about Medicaid coverage is displayed as Trina Le, eligibility supervisor team lead, works at Hope Clinic on May 30, 2023, in Houston, Texas.Nearly a quarter of adults disenrolled from Medicaid in the past year say they are now uninsured, according to a survey released Friday that details how tens of millions of Americans struggled to retain coverage in the government insurance program for low-income people after pandemic-era protections began expiring last spring.
Going without insurance even for a short period of time can lead people to delay seeking care and leave them at financial risk when they do.Seven in 10 adults who were disenrolled during the unwinding process say they became uninsured at least temporarily when they lost their Medicaid coverage. “I was very relieved,” she said. Unsure of their insurance status, Hamar said, her 23-year-old daughter delayed getting a dental checkup.Of adults enrolled in Medicaid before the unwinding, about 35% who tried to renew their coverage described the process as difficult, and about 48% said it was at least somewhat stressful.
Nationally, states have disenrolled about 20 million people from Medicaid in the past year, most of them for procedural reasons such as failure to submit required paperwork. That number is expected to grow, as states have a few more months to redetermine enrollees’ eligibility.